Arrived in Le Mans 2 days ago as planned and met up in town with my friend C as planned. Always a joy to meet up again.
Little did we know we would be the victims of a fairly violent aggression later that night. We were robbed of possessions and left semi unconscious on the pavement. I had no idea what happened to C but when I arrived in hospital, after a group of young people called an ambulance, C had also been transferred there. The rest of the night was spent there after some immediate first aid. One forgets how much one bleeds with a facial injury. Yesterday morning we were released after a head scan in my case. Got a replacement phone, went to the police, hired a car was the order of the day.
Met up with the rest of the group which arrived late afternoon from Germany.
It is still dark outside and sleep is hard to come by. My left eye has swollen and diverse pains can be felt.
Also wondering how to solve the problem that my car is in the middle of town with my medication + entrance tickets to the racing track +++ and the keys in the hand of my attacker. Basically we are stuck for the time being.
What a thrilling and tight finish.
As I write this, the Dongfeng boat has just crossed the finishing line. The rest of the fleet is literally a few meters away.
This means that Dongfeng is the overall winner of the race which started in Alicante 8 months ago.
We have seen some brilliant racing in horrendous conditions at time. Well do to all the teams. I am happy to see that a French skipper Charles Caudrelier led the team to victory. Pretty exciting stuff and so many tactical decisions had to be made.
I’ll go out and celebrate.
I have been so busy I have missed the departure yesterday of the 11th leg from Göteborg to The Hague. It is the final leg of this gigantic race. It is a short one with a distance of approximately 980 miles but is is a very tricky one from a navigation point of view.
Some might not know that we have started a small group called:
We have met a couple of times for dinner, drinks and a few laughs.
If anyone is interested in joining in, we are meeting again next Tuesday June 26th in the evening and in which case you should send me a message either on Facebook or a comment on this blog entry.
I am very pleased with my birthday present despite a couple of facts:
