Month: April 2011

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Personal

Atlantic coast sailing trip

I have just returned from another great week sailing, for the first time on the Atlantic coast of France, for a captain’s certification with MCV sailing school. I learnt all about tide and sea current drift calculations, and we cruised almost 40nm daily with different spinnakers and sails on a 45″ performance Dufour yacht. That coastline has tides well over 6m, and ports that dry up at low tide, leaving boats stranded, quite impressive for a newcomer. We spent days going over solo maneuvers and man-over-board and other risks and solutions. There’s now nothing to prevent me from taking a boat with the family or solo anywhere, which opens up some interesting possibilities for the next trips.
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Categories
Personal

Enduro all-terrain motorbike fun

I decided a few weeks ago to take on a new sport challenge. After considering kite surfing, as an alternative to windsurfing which I already know, I decided instead on enduro motor-biking, an all terrain powered alternative to mountain biking. The immense hills and forests in my home area would make a perfect playground for an enduro bike, and the motor would allow me to go so much further with less fatigue than my mountain bike.

The driving laws in France allow all car license holders to drive a motor-bike of up to 125cc and 15hp, so there are dozens of choices in this category for the French. A short obligatory 7hr motor-bike course later, I settled on the Yamaha WR125R Enduro and received it this weekend. On the highway, it barely manages to get up to 120kmh, but off-road it’s a real pleasure.

Dressed in all the body armor money can buy, looking a little like an astronaut, I carved up and down the hills, across mud holes and rocky terrain, and had huge fun in almost 3hrs that felt like 1hr. Not unlike mountain biking, I was sometimes standing to avoid get jolted around, and I occasionally had to use my feet to avoid a sidewards slide. With >10x the weight of a mountain bike, turning around in tight dead-ends was a challenge, but getting up steep hills with small rocks was very easy. There’s plenty more to tell, but I’ll tempt the reader to discover the joys and pains on their own!

Highly recommended.
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