Just a few days before setting sail on the qualification run for the Vendée Globe, I was lucky enough to meet the teenagers from the Fondation d’Auteuil association, who had participated in an introduction to sailing program at La Trinité-sur-Mer, thanks to support from the SAFRAN Group. I especially appreciated their frank curiosity and enthusiasm when they visited the Safran monohull in dry-dock. Plus, I know that I’ll see them again in a couple weeks, before the race…

All the work we planned on our return from Boston (The Artemis Transat) has now been completed and tested. Finishing the work planned for July meant that the entire team was on a busy schedule. Just three days after re-launching the boat I weighed anchor for a qualification run of 1,500 nautical miles. The organizing committee for the Vendée Globe requires this run for all boats having undergone significant changes to the keel or rigging. Since we replaced the fin, we had to make this qualification run.

June 21 is the start of summer, at least theoretically. In France, it’s also the “Fête de la Musique”, a day dedicated to music in the street, and the end of very stressful period for the high school students who have just finished their exams for the “Baccalaureate” and are looking forward to summer vacation. For us, skippers of Open 60 monohull racing boats, it’s time to take a short break after our transatlantic crossings between Europe and the USA.

I haven’t exactly been twiddling my thumbs since my last blog posting in April. For those of you new to this site, here’s a short recap: we had the crewed speed runs at Douarnenez, which our boat Safran won, then the Artemis Transat solo race between Plymouth and Boston, a short 6-day break to rest up, and then back to my home port of La Trinité-sur-Mer, once again solo. That’s only a very brief summary, but everything has happened so fast since we relaunched the boat in April, that all the images are running through my mind like several movies at once, without much time to catch my breath!

Marc Guillemot is staying the course, en route for Boston in The Artemis Transat, despite his accident. But he needs your support to meet this challenge, and would be very pleased to know that you're thinking of him.

Back to work! First, back in the water on Safran, then back to my office to tackle this blog, which was seeming awfully skinny lately… I humbly accept all of your comments concerning my long absence from the keyboard. When I’m back on land, I’ll try to stay closer to my laptop from now on!

Sailors identified with races like Le Figaro, or the Mini-Transat, and with multihull or Open 60 monohull boats, found themselves on the snow-covered slopes of the Avoriaz ski resort for a “Sea & Mountain Week”, all superbly organized by Daniel Charié and Martine Gahinet. Sailors and skiers alike tried out all the runs in this popular Alps ski resort.

I’m writing this on December 31, 2007. What better day could there be to close out a year rich in maritime adventures and the initial results of our newly launched Safran Open 60 monohull.

I’d like to start out my last entry of the year by thanking everybody who contributed to or supported this blog. Some of the energy that I’m pouring into our boat is generated directly by your kind messages.

During his radio interview on the 2nd day of the Transat Ecover B to B, Marc Guillemot warmly thanked everybody who had taken the time to post messages of support, encouragement and congratulations throughout the preceding Transat Jacques Vabre race.

Marc Guillemot and co-skipper Charles Caudrelier left Le Havre in the new Safran Open 60 monohull boat on November 3, heading for Bahia in Brazil. You can post messages to Marc and Charles on this page.

For the last six weeks, Safran has been based at her home port, La Trinité-sur-Mer. She has been through a series of ongoing trials in Quiberon bay, starting with the convoy run to Le Havre, where the christening ceremony was held, and continuing through the qualifier for the Transat Jacques Vabre. Every trip out sees the Safran Sailing Team step in at some point to continue fine-tuning our racing machine… and there's plenty going on!

On August 6th, SAFRAN made her first foray outside and into what became a relatively surreal backdrop, although barely a couple of cable-lengths from the water. For the gloomy, rain-soaked Gujan-Mestras sky, which normally looks down on bustling oyster fishermen, international pétanque championships on the specially-equipped main square, and the regular launching of vast 'luxury yachts' fresh off the Couach boatyard lines, that day saw the new SAFRAN slide out of the Larros boatyard… without a keel!

My blogs have been so few and far between lately that you could be forgiven for thinking that the whole team had gone on holiday leaving the boat behind at the Chantier Naval de Larros shipyard. Obviously, it's been a case of "anything but", and, at the time of writing in my last blog in June that we were now in the home stretch, I hadn't really appreciated just how long that last stretch would take.

While our future competitors are getting ready on the water, the SAFRAN team is at the Larros boatyard in Gujan-Mestras, fine-tuning the final details - and there's a fair few of them - on our future 'machine'. She's a spanking white at the minute, but is due to be dressed in her new decorations in early July.

We still have a hefty workload on SAFRAN down at the boatyard, but things are progressively taking shape, and the end is in sight. Once the boat fittings, stanchions and balcony had been pre-assembled, we caught a glimpse of what SAFRAN will really look like in the flesh. The general appearance, when you look at the boat as a whole, gives it a futuristic look.