Dreaming of St. Malo
As today will be the last sunny day of June (as they forecast rain all this weekend) I abandoned my chores, grabbed my Pentax camera and headed out the door before Mother Nature changed her mind, and rained on my parade ...
Well, okay, not so much my parade as that of the St. Malo Quebec City boat race. It's held every four years and the starting point is here, from our fair city—sailing on Sunday's early morning tide whatever the weather. So I thought I'd better go take photos while we had fair weather. I took near on 40 decent shots of which I'll choose a handful, and showcase them over on my photo blog, Snap Happy.
Guess who got a little sun burnt too? Yeah, I forgot to put sunscreen on before heading out the door. At least I remembered my ball cap. It was a small price to pay to be down in the marina walking the dockside next to the boats and chatting with some of the crew.
The boats are amazing, and really specific in build to this sort of cross-Atlantic racing. They all have squat turtle like bodies, huge masts, and are covered in solar panels and high-tech gadgets. I serious wanted to board at least one but never asked. The place was so crowded was on-lookers like myself, that I thank the generous people kind enough to take a minute to talk about the race. And headed back up on to the upper dockside to snap as many photos as I could.
I would have bought a baseball cap but the woman on the booth had sold the last one that morning. Which was a shame. Still, I got to see the boats, I got to talk to some crew members, and I got a happy couple of hours in the sun soaking in the atmosphere while dreaming of crewing in the race, and of St. Malo, in Brittany. A place I visited in my misspent youth way back when.
If you ever get a chance to visit France, make sure it's Brittany you visit, and go to St. Malo, you won't regret it.
Ah, mon ami ... je rêve ...