Roland Jourdain and his men arrived in Cowes this week to take part in Cowes Week starting on July 31. A heavy program awaits them, as the Veolia Environnement team is taking this opportunity to try their hand first in the Extreme 40s race before taking on the 60-foot monohull fleet in the Artemis Challenge on August 3.
As the July holidaymakers swap places with their August counterparts, any thought of holidays is far from the thoughts of the Veolia Environnement crew. After a second session sailing solo to get the boat into the best shape possible for the upcoming Route du Rhum, Roland Jourdain set off this week for Cowes to take part in the second race of the season for Veolia Environnement: the Artemis Challenge on August 3, around the Isle of Wight.
While the monohull is sailed over the weekend towards the English coast, Roland Jourdain has already been in Cowes since the start of the week to take part in the Extreme 40s inshore race that will run from July 31 to August 5, alongside the IMOCA races. This is an opportunity for Bilou to get a feel again for multihull racing, which will certainly remind him of his Formula 40 days back in the late 1980s, “It will seem strange because it’s been quite a while since I’ve done this, especially this kind of inshore racing. Racing against the likes of Peyron, Guichard and Cammas, we will clearly be the outsiders, but it’s always good to seize this sort of opportunity and take part in something outside our program, because it’s always instructive to challenge yourself.”
So, Roland will be straddling two types of boat in Cowes: on Tuesday, August 3, Roland will move onboard Veolia Environnement, the 60-foot monohull version this time, to take part in the fourth Artemis Challenge, a fifty nautical mile race around the Isle of Wight. The current Veolia Environnement knows this stretch of water well and was successful on this course last year under the colors of BT. “The Artemis Challenge will also be a first for me,” says Roland, “and the boats look like putting on a fine show on the Solent. We will be in race mode, so we will once again be keeping an eye on everything onboard to see if anything needs tightening up for our upcoming races.” This UK event, in which each boat is supporting a good cause, will also be an opportunity for Veolia Environnement to raise funds for Plan France, a charitable organization that helps underprivileged children around the world.
Cowes Week in Extreme 40s from July 31 to August 5, 2010
Veolia Environnement crew: Roland Jourdain, Philippe Legros, Jean-Christophe Mourniac, Christophe André and Franck Citeau (replacing Roland Jourdain on August 3)
Artemis Challenge for IMOCA monohulls August 3, 2010
Veolia Environnement crew: Roland Jourdain, Pierre-Emmanuel Hérissé, Guillaume Le Brec, Stéphane Jaouen, Brian Thompson, Alain Barazer et Rhys Mellor
From Can You Sea
