It’s official – we like Weymouth so much we’re adding a day to the Transmanche weekend, so that we have a day to enjoy Weymouth and meet friends at Weymouth Sailing Club! Such is the feeling at Cherbourg Yacht Club, and it will be up to us at WSC to add to the traditional culinary reception organised so admirably by Steve and Josie and Cheryl, maybe with an inter-club sailing event in the Bay – I favour an event with the results of every boat from each club counting! Or a duel in Grand Surprises, perhaps..
Having talked to Marcel today (Thursday), I now know that following a meeting with the sponsors in November a flyer will go out to clubs all along the north French coast advertising the event, and we will include Weymouth advertising material with the materials sent out to potential competitors - the aim is to put this event on the Channel calendar, and unlike so many events, when you arrive there's a legendary party laid on, rather than going round a buoy and heading home...
It’s a privilege to live and sail among the best sailors of the Channel – to race against Pascal and Alexis Loison in Cherbourg, and against our Commodore on a Sunday morning after her excellent talk on the trials and tribulations of the Fastnet, is to be among those who are prepared to push things a bit further than us mere mortals, whose ambition is merely to try to beat them round the cans, or simply not to lose the garlic press in the bilges on a Channel crossing!
Talking of which, yesterday was about the nicest weather I could have hoped for to cross to Cherbourg on Monday – NE 12-15 knots steady, increasingly sunny as I approached the French coast, which corresponded with my mood, and only dropping off a mile or two outside the Passe de l’Est, which meant I had the engine on just enough to provide hot water for washing-up before arriving, and dropping into the life of my second home.
In the Yacht Club bar I found out about Alexis Loison’s success in the Generali, a Figaro event comprising longer offshore races and short club-type ‘sausages’ in the ports which accommodate the event in the western Mediterranean. The photo of Alexis showering in champagne suggests the level of hygiene to which he is becoming accustomed! Meeting up with him more or less where I saw him just before he left, just outside the capitainerie, it was only the size of his smile which indicated his progress, though he said he had found the rhythm of the event difficult – a two day offshore race, two days rest, then an intense regatta in front of the spectators, then another offshore race, etc. – but his point score over the whole event gave him the right to the ‘poo shampoo’! A YCC club member said, ‘Yes, we celebrated that too’…
As for Alexis, we will know by the end of the week whether he will be taking part in this year’s Sydney-Hobart with Fastnet winner Gery Trenteseaux, though not as a paid hand – a large number of ‘professionals’ like Alexis in French sailing are only sponsored for their class, though they willingly help out for the Fastnet, etc – though we have yet to spot any of them aboard Richard Woof’s J90!
Visiting my friend Beatrice’s bookshop, Le Schiste Bleu, yesterday, I found a book which reminded me that however much I may think I know Cherbourg, there’s always more. Our WSC centenary rally included a visit to the Liberation Museum at the Fort du Roule, and this year we visited the German command post and bunkers inside the hill – eerie reminders of the Occupation our country never had to experience. The book is about the dismantling of a local Resistance network and consists of documents of the French police working for the German SD: the narrative begins with the theft of a bicycle, and an almost comic chase, during which the police, whose machines are not racing bikes, ask a passing cyclist at the crossroads underneath the Fort du Roule, to chase the fugitive for them, which he successfully does, narrowly missing being shot in the process. Sadly the fugitive is a youthful and inexperienced member of a Resistance cell with a wife and young child; interrogated, he reveals what he knows and the other members of the cell are rounded up.
The number of young people who were executed for trying to resist the invader, and make the Allies’ task easier on D-Day, is commemorated in the permanent exhibition at the Fort du Roule, which many members have now visited; the number is made the more horrifying by the fact that their compatriots in the police were helping to arrest and hand them over. Ironically, after the war, the person put in charge of de-Nazifying Normandy was the chief police collaborator!
Peaceful as Cherbourg is, it is hard to escape the weight of the Occupation – having seen at close quarters the strength of the German defences thanks to our expert guide Cyril, one find oneself thankful for the rapid successes following D-Day, which liberated Cherbourg in a mere three weeks from a nightmare which had lasted almost exactly four years, and cost the town hundreds of civilian lives…
Stop press - That great symbol of resistance, the statue of Napoleon, has been removed for cleaning and restoration, and will look cleaner and a bit shinier when it comes back. Its place has been taken by his horse, Bucephalus, the idea being that N has gone to have a last look around the town!
The statue was the work of Armand le Veel, unveiled in 1858 after the departure of Victoria and Albert from their royal visit - they would not have been amused at its unveiling! It survived the German trawl for metal in WW2 as the local council insisted that Napoleon is gesturing towards England, encouraging invasion - and so he was left alone!
Steve Fraser
Aliya
