12. October 2018

Sailing race: Championnat de France espoirs glisse, catamaran

France, Brest, August 2018

Youth sailing talent Manolo Geslin-Grimaud, aged 16 years, is well known by KNUD E. HANSEN, as we have followed him the past 2 years. At the French championship two years ago, he won and ended as number five at the European championships. After one week at Brest, west coast of France, for the French championships of the Catamaran SL 16 class, Manolo tells us his impressions about his race.

Manolo: “The result doesn’t show the real work of the year. We finished as number 12 out of 36 boats and had hoped for a better result. In fact, the challenge this year when starting this series (catamaran SL 16) was double, learn a new boat type and also to build a team that could perform well. We did our best with my crewmate Gildwen, who joined me just two weeks before the competition as my regular crewmate suddenly couldn’t participate. This was a real challenge, just before the race that we had been preparing for a year. Anyway, this is part of the “game” and we managed to achieve quite good results for a first attempt. The atmosphere in Brest was really great with many young sailors from all over France. The weather was a bit cold for the season and the wind instable which make the races a bit difficult . I was proud to sail with the KNUD E. HANSEN logo on the sails and hulls and would have liked to do better, but I will return next year  even more motivated, now it’s time to go home to train to be on top soon. I thank a lot KNUD E. HANSEN for the support”.