We arrived in Britanny late in the evening on Friday at Mathilde's house after train and car... Long trip but a lot of laughs...You know, 3 girls together ! There, we met another Mathilde, a youger one ! She is our bow for this event and only is 17 ! Even Gaëlle and Pop seem old comared to her !! Hihi, I'm now a grand ma !

Saturday morning, 7 am.... Too early... 8.45 am in StQuay for weighting the crews... We find back a lot of well knwn girls and we are happy to see her. The weather is fine (sunny, cloudy, windy !) a little bit shifty / tricky... Hard time for tactician... We lost the first matches against MAthilde and Julie because we need to train together... The next match is cancelled because of an important rotation of the wind, it's now 2 legs with the wind abeam !
We win the match against Maÿlis, a good one with very light wind. We win pre-start and take and keep the lead during the match. We hoped to do the same thilng against Christelle Philippe but we loose with a boat length at the the finishing line.
Good evening with the girls at Mathilde's...

Sunday morning, 7 am again, We still have 2 matchs to sail to complete the round robin. We win the second with a lot of luck because the wind is very tricky and we are where we have to be more often than the other girl... But it's also the game ! The race comitee is very nice with us and decide to begin a new round robin before the final phases. We sail two other extra matches and we loose them quite close from the girls but loose...
We're getting better and better but we seriously lack of training...

We stay having a look on the semi-files, and we leave to come back to Paris under the rain ...
Here we are.... The WE is ended, too early again !
                                                                                                                                                                    Marie

PS : We still have to wish Good Luck to Mathilde and her team for Brazil W's Cup, next week....Girls, you are the best !

Vendredi 7^th of march, 4.a.m. quite early in the morning but we leave Marseille to fly to Porto ! There, we rent a car to go to Vigo on the Atlantic coast, north west of Spain.
Half an hour earlier than the flight time schedule, we land... Sunny, a good day in view ! Thanks to the GPS (or so...) we arrive at Punta Lagoa's Yacht Club. Just in time to discover the boat (sun fast 200) for Pop and training for all the team. Like past years, wind falls at noon, and we wait... During the afternon we can sail 3 matchs with very light wind. We have a quiet good speed, but some difficulties to go down with symetrical spinnaker and make a 
Pizza-shrimps-hotel.
After 20 hours, we really deserve a good night !
                                                                                                                                                                    Stacha

Last part of the mediterranean championship. We don't have been invited to the part 3 in Sète in December. Nevertheless, after some windy trainings in the bay of Marseille, we are now ready to compete against good men team ! Pre-starts are improving training after training ....

First match against my boyfriend...Very stressy because they're talented and the wind is falling down ! But we take a good start and we win !  We won  2 other matchs, lost one stupidly for an OCS we misunderstood (we all need some glasses to make the difference between yellow and blue !!!)...
Some matchs and a chocolate cake later, we finished 7^th ath this regatta (on 10 teams) and 9^th of the mediterranean championship (on 19 teams). We are quite happy ! 
 
                                                                                                                                                                                    Marie

First regatta with Pop as a skipper ! Stressy time for her... 2 days in Antibes where we are hosted by Gaëlle and her room mates... Due to hhe very light conditions, the race comitee decided to share the teams in two groups. We win 2 matchs, and very good ones ! We are very proud !! To finish to the 6^th position (on 10 teams) !  Quite good for a first time !

3 days training match race, organized by womens' comitee of the Franch sailing federation (FFV) in Marseille ! For our "new" team, it's the second training. Pop (the skipper : Marie, but not me !) begins to learn keel boat (not the same thing than single dinghy !!), leading a team and ... match race pre-start : stress and laughs guaranteed ! We meet again Mathilde's team, Julie's one too ! Nice... Some news of Delphine : she has now a new team. We wish her good luck. The weather is great for training match race, and Marc Bouët makes us perfect and very interesting debriefs...

Claire Leroy is also here to share her skills. She has come on board for 2 interesting matchs. Pop has been able to notice a lot of stuffs, very useful for good pre-starts ! Lots of works are waiting us now, but the beginnings are promising. We have a proper way of sailing (especially in fleet race), but pre-start are very bad for now...

To conclude, we have spent a great WE at home !

                                                                                                                                                                                    Marie

We just come back from Germany, where the weather was less nice than in Antibes last week and a big cold shock for Marie (Pop) ! ... We finished at the 5^th position on 8 team.
Big moves forseen for the team  : See you in the next report !

This time, we were at home (or very close ! 200km of Marseille)....We just come back from the Internationaux des Alpes Maritimes, grade 2, which took place in Antibes these las days. Mediterranean weather, sunny, warm, light breeze, and warm water!  

We, Delphine, Marie (alias Pop!) and me, are arrived from the trainning day on the wednesday afternoon where Marine, our bow women for this event, was waiting for us. We met again some well known and friendly french team like Mathilde's one or Julie's. 

2 round robins have been completed in perfect weather conditions. The race comitee and the Umpires did a great job to sail a maximum of matchs.  Between 2 flights Marie and I were swimming ! We won 3 matchs on the first round robin (and lost two stupidly because of stupids penalty), 4 wins on the second match (after a crash with the swedish team who arrived on starboard while we were totally  stopped unable to move). We ranked at the 5th position at the end of the round robins. Marc Bouët was in Antibes for the event, so he made for the french teams a very interesting and instructive debriefing. 

On sunday, light coonditions just allowed to sail only one flight for the final and consoltaion places. We lost against the Swedish and finished the event at the 6^th position...

                                                                                                                                                                                    Marie

The famous Trentino’s Grade 1 did not disappoint us. We were in Pieve di Ledro, on a small Lake at 15 km from the wonderful Lake Garda. We come across our habits again with small boats (J22) and a 4 women crew (Delphine, Stacha, Marie-Agnès and Sandrine). After two rainy, stormy but no windy days, the end of the regatta went as expected. We sailed interesting matches, won 4 of them. Some were keenly contested and we’ve learnt many things thanks notably to Christelle Philippe’s crew’s advice.

We’re finally ranked 8^th on 12 crews, which is quite satisfying with regard to the level of this event.

                                                                                                                                                                                    Sandrine

4^th of august

Here we are... The week in Sweden is over... We come back in France tomorrow after this 6 wonderful days of sailing!
One round full round robin, 11 matches... Quite windy regatta (12-18 knts  during all the week), which made things quite hard for us.... DS37 are great but tough boats! We only win 1 match against the finnish team of Silja Lehtinen, we loose the others. The level of the regatta was the highest we've ever sailed. All the shippers invited are in the top 25 of the ISAF ranking list ! So, we finish last! Again!
Our hosts have been so nice with us, invited us to share a typical swedish meal... So we cooked for them a typical french dinner : "pissaladière" from the south, "boeuf bouguinion" and "gratin dauphinois", cheese, green salad, and to finish a "tarte tatin", the whole meal with french wines and "baguette", of course!! The last day, before going to watch the finals on the tribune, Irene, our hostess, brought us to walk along the beautiful shore and  have a bath in the swedish bath in the 17°C sea! Even Stacha and Sandrine managed to swim in it!

                                                                                                                                                                                    Marie

30^th of july :

We arrived yesterday early in the morning for Marie, Sandrine, Delphine, Mathilde and Pauline. Later for me... The organization team has picked us up at the Göteborg airport, Sweden and led us to our swedish hosts. We're living in nice houses of the village, just near the yacht club! Today, we practise the boats : DS37, nice boats but quite big! 2 hours of training : maneuvers, team coordination and communication, and so on... We finish the training with a friendly match against the finnins team.Nous avons même fini l'entraînement par un match amical contre les Finlandaises menées par Silja Lehtinen. The boats are well and si wind comes it should be very good with the 90m² spinnaker! Skippers briefing then opening ceremony... on a big 3 masts boat, a copy from an acint one, built in Göteborg) for the skipper! Lot of people on the pier to welcome the boat which just come back from China! Many official speeches, some in Swedish, songs, and skippers presentation following by a big cocktail! Great life here !!


http://www.lysekilwomensmatch.se/

Come back from Long Beach, California! After some days of holyday in Los Angeles (just like movies... America!), We reached Long Beach for the  Mayor's Cup, a grade 2 event. 4 very intense days of regatta. We were sailing on Catalina 37, the boats used for the Congressionnal Cup (a grade 1 open event very famous)... 7 on board (Delphine, Marie, Marianne, Sandrine, Athénaïs, Stacha and Marie!)... These boats are great but they've taken us a very long time to know how to use them (frankly, I think we never managed it! lol), especially due to the deep pole... However, a great event, even if very hard for us! We only won one match on 14... but a good one, against the australian team led by Katie Spithill (6^th on the ISAF ranking list)! 5 american teams on the top and the 3 foreigners just behind!
But a very nice and good organization whiche reallly took care of us, the little french team (event to get the last 'Harry Potter' for some of us!), very nice american people ! A really good 'souvenir' with a lot of typical american/english sentences (which make us laugh, so cute!) like 'Sorry about that', 'it's amazing' and 'oh my god!'

Thank you all, Camille, Mary, Sean, Betsy, Amy and all the teams, umpires, organization, sponsors... for this great event !


http://www.mayorscuplongbeach.com/

Litle deception this week end in La Rochelle... We just come back from the Women Student European MR Cup at the 5^thposition on 10... We  hven't sailed very good and we've payed it ... Very good time in La Rochelle however because of the great organization of this event! We're always happy to come to this regatta (it's the 3^rd time we come!).


http://www.suapse.univ-lr.fr

3^rd release of the ISAF World Match Race Rankings in 2007.. We move up from 20 to 19 (203 skippers ranked)... Not so bad because we only have 6 events on 8, 4 this year and 2 for the last year...

http://www.sailing.org/matchrace/mrranking.asp

2^nd release of the ISAF World Match Race Rankings in 2007. We still move down from 18 to 20 (206 skippers ranked), however, our good score in Spain some days ago has not yet been taken in account....

http://www.sailing.org/matchrace/mrranking.asp

5 months later we come back in Vigo (Spain) for the Punta Lagoa Women's Match Race (Grade 3). Once again we're not full team : Del, Sandrine et Marie... Fortunately, we met Ariane, during the winter trainings in Marseille. She has been our bow for the event instead of our beloved Stacha who is looking for a training period... On thursday, we had some time to sail on the boats Sun Fast 2000. We even sailed a match against Julie... loss... We learn that we are 5 french teams for 10 teams on this event! Fun...

Friday : first match, first win in very light conditions... then the win totally falls and we wait on the dock some hours...We have time to meet others team, play 'Uno' with Julie's team like in Hamburg... At about 5pm we go back on the sea (there is now 16 knots! good!) to sail for 3 matches where we win... good day, on tomorrow we will meet the Frenchh team .... it won't be easy at all!

Saturday : same ligth conditions on the morning.... so we again for hours... On the afternoon, we sail 4 races. 2 wins, 2 losses... and especially against Mathilde Geron, we make a beautiful tactical mistake about the proper course so we get a penalty and loose this match! we should have a luffing situation or make a double tack... we won't forget this case now! The other lost match is against Julie, after a beautiful race but we are not in it... and we loose half a boat length behind her! We now lead the round robin, we have still one match to sail againt Maïlys Dulos and all can be changed! Umpires and Race Comitee are doing great job, evening debriefing is really instructive, and we learn a lot!

Sunday : last day, good wind conditions for our last match of the round robin. We take our revenge on Maïlys for La Rochelle last year!Del doesn't let her lead pre-start. We give us 2 penalties and although her good sailing during the match she can't take the point... We win and we're quite happy! In semi-finale we sail againt a very nice spanish team led by Sandra Azon (ex n°1 on the Yngling ISAF ranking list with her sister!). We win 2-0. In finale, we sail against the french-italian team of Anee-Soizic Bertin. We win the first match, and then wait for the wind... 2 hours later, wind comes back... we lost the second match. The third match would have been great, if we didn't make a great mistake on the start line... we killed ourselves and let her the victory...

However, a good 2nd place after great matches and good three days in Spain! We hope that we'll be able to come back in august for the European Championship!

1^st release of the ISAF World Match Race Rankings in 2007. We move down from 17 to 18 (200 skippers ranked), just one place in the women's ranking list, while we move up from 311 to 231 in the open ranking list (1523 skippers ranked) thanks to the Mediterranean championship.

http://www.sailing.org/matchrace/mrranking.asp

The last week end of the Mediterranean championship was finally cancelled for some administrative obscure grounds. But, to compensate for, all the crews were invited to train in Marseille. Delphine, Marie, Ariane and Sandrine were in on it. Saturday was very windy and we have some difficulties to manoeuvre especially being only 4 on board and without our bow. In this weather, we weren’t strong enough to compete with men’s crews. But, fortunately we were better ashore with Delphine’s delicious apple and chocolate cake marked 14/20 by Dimitri! Sunday was a better day for us. The morning was wind less. We finally went offshore at midday with easier conditions and good results. We succeeded in beaten Nicolas Vandenhautte’s crew and, for the first time after a keenly contested match, Florent Gaggero’s one. We finally reaped the rewards of our trainings. Success also at the end of the day with Sandrine’s chocolate cake marked 15/20… Guys shall not get used to it!

01.25.07 : Last week end of the Mediterranean championship in Hyères cancelled ...

01.21.07 : Marseille

No wind at the beginning of the saturday... Like in Sète, we are waiting... Good for us because we were waiting for our dear bow who missed her train (sleeping...)
Then we got 10-18knts. 3 matches for the day. We took our revenge on Mathieu Frei... We won the match on the last tack! The following match against Guillaume Canado was a succes... good start, proper moves... And the last match was lost against Maxime Paul... far away! Nice sunset on the bay of Marseille....
On sunday, race comittee feared of lot of wind... they really are from Marseille... Just 18knts at the end of the day, but on the morning, there were waves but no wind... 4 match to sail. Single match won, but very well, against Marine Pailloux. Good communication on board, good start... good match! If only we sailed each time like that! For the last match, instead of a win, we had good feelings with the spinaker on the donwind legs thanks to the wind... We finally end the event on the 5th position... not so good, not so bad. We're quite satisfied.... See you next week in Hyères for the last handle of the championship...

Stacha

Thank you so much Thomas to come from Lyon to take all these great picture of us !!

01.14.07 : Sète

A lot of 'Tarot' games and gril's discussion on the saturday due to the lack of wind! However, as 'Uno' was in Hambourg, 'Tarot' allows us to meet the other teams. To put a final end to the day, the sailing club of Sète offers us cakes and drinks!
Fortunately, on sunday, the wind was here... 10-15knts. Just enough and good for our ladies team!! We began with a beautiful match against Guillaume Canado which will be our single win of the day... Not so brilliant but the other matches were very interesting for us. We were not so far from some good teams as Michel Cohen or Florent Gaggero.We saw a very beautiful rounding up... the consequences were a spinaker teared to shreads... We lost too against Mathieu Frei from Antibes... He cuts the lign just ahead of us after we led all the match! We'll have our revenge match next week! 

http://www.ffvoilelr.net/

Last ranking release for the year 2006. We keep on 17^th position !!! Next ranking release is planned on  february the 1 ^st of 2007... Merry Christmas and Happy New Year ...

http://www.sailing.org/matchrace/mrranking.asp

This week end, we (Delphine, Gaëlle, Marianne, Stacha and Athénais, who just joins the team)sailed at home in Marseille on an open event grade 4, qualifying for the mediterranean championship. 1 female team against 9 open team...waoo.The weather conditions were good : good win but cloudy and even sometimes rainy! On saturday, we sailed 6 matches ; 3 wins (and very awful mistakes!). On sunday, we just had 3 matches, but very difficult ones ... and 1 win later, it was not enough to go to the petit finale... Too bad! We finished at the 5^th position... One more time, not so good but not so bad. A very good debriefing with our trainer Dimitri was necessary. We analyse our mistakes ans try to establish a trainning program for the next winter trainnings (next week end for example!) and for the Mediterranean Championship in January.

Here we are! After Hamburg, we are now sailing at home ... sunny, slight wind (5/12 knots), 20°C in the air, 18°C for the sea... Very nice weather conditions for the middle of november. The match racing trainings are planned by the "ligue Alpes-Provence" and our yacht club "YCPR". Our trainer Dimitri Deruelle makes us worked very hard. Good for us. We match against open team... Quite hard.
However, we spent some time to take pictures of us, MArseille and the J80...

Tonight, there was the champions' ligue party... Delphine and her team  have been rewarded for our good results this year (especially in Women Match Racing of course)...
One little picture :

Northern expedition ... We've left a sunny and quite warm South of France to land in Hamburg on wednesdayt, the 1st of november. A brief trainning on thursday afternoon allowed us to be more familiar with the 'Streamline' boat, a double trapeze keel boat that none of us has sailed before ! For this event we changed our role : Gaelle took the jib and Marie the main.
We have a funny and cold surprise on friday morning ! Boats are frozen ! Really light winds, very shifty conditions, sunshine and cold was what Hamburg has to offer this days. 2 semi round-robins, semi-finales, petit finale and finale are planned on the three days. 12 teams, some well-knowns... We run 5 matchs on friday. We're not in it, results are disappointings : 1 win, 2 silly defeats . We have diner at 6h30... But the HSC made the thigs well. They 've offered us a nigth bus sight-seeing tour of the town! Very beautiful city! On Saturday, more wind, rain and a little bit warmer weather. We only have 2 matchs today. We want to win and we win both. Otherwise, all day long, we play  'Uno' with others teams... Thank you Maja (POL), Ulrike (GER) and Nuria (ESP) to have played with us... and also to a new french team lead by Julie Bossard. Very good evening on the 'Hanseboot' show party.. Nice to have fun with other teams. On sunday, we have 4 matchs, and without Gaelle who left this morning because of her exams. We sail with Ulrike Firk, as she said to us : very good for french-german friendship (and very fun to sail in English!) ! Thank you Ulrike ! We hope we'll be able to do it again !  We win 2 matchs and loose the 2 other ones against Silke Hahlbrock and Gemma Farrell. The comittee made a very good job, we finished a complete round robin and Silke Hahlbrock won the final...
Finally, it's not so bad (but not so good) for us, we finished on the 7th position, the level of the teams was very good !
To finish, we would like to thank Barbara et Stefan Meyer and their sons Mitja et Miklas. We stayed at their home and they offered us a terrific time in Hamburg!Thank you again Barbara, Stefan, Mitja et Miklas and we hope to come back next year ! 

           => more pictures ...

http://www.hsc-hamburg.org/hscindex.htm

Here we are ! We just enter into the world top 20! Todoy, we're now 17th on women's ranking list ...

Come back from Punta Lagoa Women's Match Race (grade 2) whiche took place in Vigo (Espagne) on 15th to 22th october 2006. Our team was 3/4 full ... Delphine, Marianne (Main) et Sandrine (Trimmer) were there. A Portugese woman, Rossanna, finished the team and helped the girls during the event.
We ranked 5^th on 10 teams.

First and brilliant victory, moreover on a grade 1 event ! From the 27^th of September to the 1^st of October 2006 the Ladies Match Cup (grade 1) has taken place in  Friedrichshafen (Germany).
With 10 wins from 14 races, we won the round robin. Then, the win dropped and the final races (against Gemma Farrel, a British team 25^ème on the ranking list) were cancelled!! So good for us!

Our first Grade 1 event! We (Delphine, Stacha, Marie, and to complete the team Mathilde Gréhal as tactician) sailed against 6 teams ranked between 10 and 20 on the ranking list... We met two other franch teams : Anne-Claire Le Berre and Christelle Philippe.First "real" debriefing with the national trainer Marc Bouët...we are almost like pros! We won 3 matches on 18 and tore (oops) brillantly one spinaker! At the end of the 2^nd day we were 6th but we really sailed badly the last day. So, we finished 7^th on 7 teams, but we 've learn so much that it wwas a very positive event for us!!

Long car trip(2200kms in 2 days, thank you Gérard for the logistic support!) for a German week end on 'Baldeneysee' for the German Women's cup (grade 3) with Delphine, Stacha and Marie, and some difficulties to find the club house... Hard to speak german at 7am!  We are happy to meet again some teams like Mary O'Loughlin and Ulrike Firk. The boats (Sportina 600) are quiet surprising to sail. Very light conditions and wavering wind with gusts...We rank 5^th on 8 teams at the end of the round robin... not enough for the finals.. We miss only one win! we keep this position after 2 interesting matches against Ulrike who finish on 6^th position.

http://www.sailing.org/isafcal/webresult.asp?eventcode=8847
http://www.essener-segelwoche.de/programm2006.php

Week end in Brittany for the Spring Cup, a grade 3 event in Saint Quay Portrieux (France). Delphine, Sandrine, Stacha and Emilie (Del's cousin) have to be satisfied with their 5^th position (on 6 teams)... Not so good but very nice weather...


http://snstquay.free.fr/articles.php?id=107

Come back from the Women's Student MR European Cup (grade 3 event). We (Delphine, Gaëlle, Sandrine, Marie and Stacha) had our first event since the team has been fulled ths winter. Last year, Delphine et Stacha had finished on the 3^rd position with another team. We hoped do better!
Very strong winds, reduced main sail but spinnaker : sportive event! On the saturday we didn't sail, too much wind and waves : swimming pool and champaign with Mary O'Loughlin and her Irish team because their national rugby team won their match! On the sea, we win all the matches of the round robin, that's great !! But we loose the finale against Maïlys Dulos... Happy but a bit desappointed! We will come back!

Marie

http://suapse.univ-lr.fr/women-sailing-cup/