Boat Preparation La Rochelle, France

You have to buy the boat through the broker in the country where you live. In our case that was Yacht Sales West in Vancouver. They were great in taking us through the proces and our boat was ready on schedule. Max S. had been in La Rochelle the week before we arrived to do an acceptance of the finall build and to get us oriented. We had done a charter of a sister ship in the British Virgin Islands in January so we were familiar with the boat and the systems.

We did not bring anything with us for the boat so we had to buy everything that we needed. This was a muli-day shopping adventure. Next was provisions for our maiden voyage across the Bay of Biscay, down the coast of Portugal to Gibraltar. Cheryl did a bunch of food preparation that we could freeze so we could have ready made meals for the trip.

The marina in La Rochelle is huge, literally 1000's of boats. Mostly sailboats.

I got a tattoo to match the boat logo:

(full disclosure, it was a temporary one)