La Cigale - Introducing La Cigale

Greetings from LA CIGALE, setting sail around the world! We are Skipper Xavier, First Mate (!) Lucy, Francis (12), Isabelle (9) and Catherine (5), joined for the Atlantic crossing by Helen and Harley, a fantastic couple who we met through Ocean Crew Finder.

We are here as much to good fortune as hard graft. Our journey started in La Rochelle, completing the purchase of a Nautitech Open 40 catamaran from a broker who'd just been let down by a charter company. We rang ARC as soon as sale was confirmed, and were put on a waiting list - places on the rally had filled up by April. Still, within 24 hours, we struck lucky with a cancellation and had our slot on the main ARC rally direct from Las Palmas to St Lucia (the ARC plus set off a week before, going via Cape Verde) confirmed.

The boat needed a lot of work to turn it from a shell into our new home for the next couple of years, so at first we stayed in AirBnbs - three over three weeks - until finally decamping onto the boat on 5 October, Francis 12th birthday! The icing on the proverbial birthday cake (or in this case, the whipped cream on zee Breton gateau) was being joined by Rich, a retired naval captain and friend of my sister's, with whom we'd been put in touch barely a few weeks before!

We set sail from La Rochelle, accompanied by a pod of dolphins, after a couple of false starts. My brother - along with new Rochelais friends Lise & Ben (from restaurant l'Astrolabe), Isabelle & Luc (our Airbnb hosts) - came out twice to wave us off! Biscay was becalmed but conditions became more dramatic as we headed across to North-West Spain, taking shelter in La Coruña the day before hurricane Ophelia arrived. At Lagos, Portugal (not Nigeria!) Rich left us. My only consolations were a tube of condensed milk and the knowledge that a couple of days later Xavier's awesome cousins from Belgium would be arriving. With Tom & Marianne, their teenage daughters Ella and Aline, we sailed to the Canaries. What a week! We had Halloween to die for ("the scariest part, Mum, was when the watermaker broke!" said Isabelle), dips in the Atlantic, more and more dolphins, and a whole heap of fun. My heart broke again when they left.

But finally in Las Palmas (not La Palma, where we had initially booked a berth... and for the wrong month too!) we moored up at the Muelle Deportivo on Pontoon S, the family pontoon. The moment we arrived RAFTKIN's Hayley and Megan brought over some homemade banana cake, what a welcome! Since then all the kids have dipped in and out of boats playing sardines & hide and seek, and all sorts of board games. We had a wonderful day in the mountains planting trees as part of an ARC-sponsored reforestation project (I put some pics on Instagram @lucylovescircusnavigating), a great day for discovering life outside the marina! We all had fun dressing up for "Under The Sea" fancy dress, but it was Catherine who won the girls' prize..."Are you a mermaid? No? A sea fairy? No again? Er, well, who are you then?" "I'm Elsa [from Frozen]," came the reply, "I FREEZE water!" Think that was the clincher! Helen and Harley joined us on 14th November, and by 19th we were ready to set sail... well, almost! (Blogpost to follow!)

We named our boat LA CIGALE, translation of "Cicada" in the La Fontaine fable, who sings his way through summer while wise, industrious Ant stocks up provisions for the winter months. In one of my grandfather's logs (he sailed round Cape Horn three times in a clipper), he wrote in one entry, as a young midshipman aged 17 "As the crew were mostly drunk the work mainly fell to us boys. Luckily we are a musical bunch, having a harpsichord, a banjo and an accordion between us." Well on our boat we have a harmonica, a guitar, a keyboard and an Irish lap harp, and, with a bit of luck and even more practice, there shall be music wherever the wind blows...

Thanks to all our friends and family for being there, and to all who join us on this journey sailing La Cigale!

Footage from our time in La Rochelle uploaded at www.sailinglacigale.com.