Wednesday 22 February 2006, the alarm clock rings at 4 AM, after a very short night because I did not close my eyes before midnight. I fell giddy. So many questions on the weather forecast remain uncertain : will the wind be as strong as expected and sector North East ? Which proper wing should I chose nothing the expected wind force ? Will the storms be mild ?…….173 miles or 278 km are a long way !!! I control for the umpteenth time my material ; particularly my rucksack containing water and food autonomy….I pray that the motor board has no problem what so ever as it already went wrong during the first attempt.

I start eating a large quantity of noodles, ham and grated cheese. I find it difficult to swallow as I am very nervos !!! Then I start to get dressed. I strap my front letf ankle ; the Team loads the truck with the material with in total 4 wings (2* 16 m², one of 13 m² and one of 12 m²), two boards, 3 complete bars and what they need for their lunch, bags and cameras…..

We drive to the marina of Saint François (Guadeloupe) to load on the motor boat the spare material, it is 5 AM and really dark. I cant’ stop watching the palm tress. Then we go to the UCPA beach where the camera man from RFO Guadeloupe (The national TV of West Indies) is waiting for us. It is now time to prepare the wing in front of the trucks’ headlights. At 5.45 AM, the sun rises and everything is ready.

The camera men take several shots of me and I beging to play the game by doing some shots twice.
Mickael, kite teacher in Saint Anne at the tkcool school, here there to help me to make the wings’ take off because the flats and the coconuts trees stop the wind and so we have to make the take off at about 20 meters from the inside the lagoon.

Brr good gracious!!! Very early in the morning the sea is far for being warm. A good fresh swim, stretches tissues!!!
At 6.22 AM I sail out of the channel of Saint Francois (West Indies Island) and at the green buoy, the skipper of Moana, a motor boat of 40 feet, puts the meter of the GPS on the zero position, it is 6.29AM. On board, there are a journalist of RFO Guadeloupe named Eric Stimfling, a private cameraman named Hugo Fustier, my loyal captain Julien Genet, the skipper of the rented motor boat named Jean Marie and finally a ship boy of his named Marco.

The wind is set North East sector between 19 and 21 knots, the weather is very clear and the sea has a swell of East North East sector of 2 to 2.5 meters troughs.
I leave in total autonomy with 4 litres of water in my rucksack, a distress flare, a potable VHS, 7 cereal bars and 10 glucose tubes. I am equipped with an one piece diving suit of 2mm, slippers, a jacket, a harness, sunglasses and a cap ( absolutely necessary against the sun when you long distance ride even though you have a sun cream with a very high protection).

Concerning the material, I sailed with a BEST BFK wing of 16 m² and a board of 1.80 meter with two ailerons.

The ride was previously planned, sail with the wind of Marie Galante at about 2 nautical miles then the wind of the Dominique Island, then the wind of the Martinique and drift, once the cape of the Martinique is behind, on Saint Lucia to catch up the south of the Island.

It was at first planned to sail 156 nautical miles but for security reasons for the motor boats’ autonomy, we had to stop at a barrier of 150 nautical miles, barrier which I sat my heart on.

It started slowly because I was not enough warmed up and the wind on the Guadeloupe was a little bit less than expected (17 knots) but it was planned that it would get faster on the Martinique and Saint Lucia (22 knots).

During the ride and despite the size of the motor boat, the passengers have also their own challenge: taking pictures to immortalize this fantastic moment. Hats off and again thank you. When the wind combined with swell splashes on the boats’ bottom, the sprays enter like drizzle inside the entire boat. The cameras have suffered a great deal. For better photographs, I stayed few minutes behind the boats’ furrow.

The descent was done with a very stable wing and enormous surfs. My highest speed which was recorded by the GPS, was of 25 knots. Fantastic!!! Just for fun: during the trip, the skipper asked me to slow down because the boat was about to break apart at that speed!!!!! It made me smile.

During the ride, I strongly fell off the kite 4 times where I lost the board but I picked it up quickly with the leach. The other 10 small falls where mainly caused by the waves which whipped my front left ankle and so unbalanced the board. At that speed everything is fatal particularly when the weariness began at the end of the trip and where the surfs were at 20 knots. I had to always anticipate on the waves and this requests an incessant concentration.

As an escort, I had flying fishes by thirty who went with me doing some jumps of 10 meters long. It is always magic to see them propulsing on their tails and floating on the crests of the waves with their wide opened caudals. Some of them were more than surprised and passed at less than one meter from me.

To eat, I opened my side pockets, by easy stages in order not to take any risk, on the right for my cereal bars and on the left my glucose tubes. I had a slight snag, 3 cereal wrappings had exploded and I can now confirm that cereal bars with sea water are not top….but when you are hungry!!! Very important, with the quantity of water that I took I could drink when ever I wanted, every 10 minutes a little sip, because very quickly when you are full in the sun a dehydration can start tendonitis and even more when you are wearing an one piece diving suit.

To compare; during the intern Caribbean between the Guadeloupe and the Martinique, 107 nautical miles, the weather was awful and irregular with enormous squalls at the end of the ride, I sailed along the coral reef of Vauclin with 2 hours ahead on my the planned schedule in a blazing sun. What fantastic images to remember. The riders, who were there, have seen the motor boat and the red BEST BFK wing sailing around 1 PM. We all met again on that evening at the UCPA club to drink a Ti Punch. Thank you to all of them for showing me their sympathy.

I was taken on board the motor boat at less than one thousand nautical miles at the south of the Sainte Lucia Island after 150 nautical miles of sailing, distance indicated on the trip tracer (I have sailed much more with all the zigzags and after 9 hours and 31 minutes standing on my kite. It represents an average of 15.76 knots. A film, showing my training and my crossing, will be produced next month. We went back immediately to the Martinique to sleep at the UCPA camp where we were WARMLY WELCOMED. Thank you to all of them for this attention.

I woke up completely stiffed, in one night I was older of 30 years!!! It was impossible to on my short, my feet stayed stock still on the ground. Just like an handicap person, I pull up one foot with my hand into my shorts’ first leg and so on for the second one. My hands are burning as I have 3 blisters on each of them. I even find it hard to breath as my abdominals hurt. Yet I have to go and take my breakfast in order to sail back to Marie Galante. Going down the stairs is my worth souvenir, I can’t bend and my knee joins are swollen. I walk as I can balancing myself from right to left…..it is hell on earth.

We sailed back passing along the coast with the Islands’ wind, the sea was calm, besides the intern Island crossing Channels where the sea always refuses to be calm. We had the pleasure of admiring 2 groups of dolphins who swam along the boats’ bottom.

I know now that it is possible to sail more than 200 nautical miles with my current training condition……but everything depends on the weather forecast. This will be the next challenge that I set for 2007.