Competing in a sailing race

I spent the last few days competing in the French National J80 which is a sailing race over three days hosted by the French Navy in Bretagne.

J80 is a popular class of 8m sailboat dedicated to racing.

Each crew must weight less than 350kg, the four of us were quite below this threshold but some crews of five were dangerously close to this.

One crew in particular didn’t eat for three days, so they could pass the weight test, the balance showed 350kg.

Only our skipper Aubin had previously sailed on a J80. One person had never sailed before - we were a beginner crew.

Against us were a lot of experienced crews, with world or olympic titles. Our goal was not to win any race but to have fun and learn.

After the three days, we ranked 30 / 31. We’re happy with our performance because we improved a lot since the first day, and we were close to the pack on the final races.