As it is with sailing and as the old saying goes, you 'have to be up early to catch morning tide', we were up early and set off with a very light breeze pushing us along slowly as we pottered our way across towards La Sable d'Olonne. The sails flopped around occasionally on a glassy sea, which allowed us time to set up reefing points and mark the boom, halyards and reef lines to allow them to be set quickly when conditions warranted a reef of two. By mid-afternoon the wisps of wind that pushed in from the NW filled in and built into a stiff afternoon sea breeze. As we arrived in La Sable, dropped sail and motored into the harbour, I was looking forward to exploring the home of the 'Vendee Globe', the solo round the world yacht race started in 1989. This is an adventure that still provides an enormous mental & physical challenge for the skippers, even with the modern technology they have now days to assist them, I really admire what it takes for these men and women to this....tough cookies. On a more practical note....we only had 0.2m under keel on low tide in this harbour, I hope the fishing boats don't bounce us on the bottom when they pass by.