There are more than 200 students to participate, with obviously the students of EM Normandie there in force. This weekend, on Saturday March 26 and Sunday March 27, 2022, the “Voiles Étudiants du Havre” take place, a regatta organized by EM Normandie, a business school based in Le Havre and Caen in particular. Several major schools participate, including Centrale Lille, Telecom Paris or ENS Paris-Saclay. In all, around forty crews from all over France will compete off Le Havre.
On each boat, 5 crew members will officiate. The boats are made available to participants by the Normandy Sailing League. This Thursday, March 24, recovery operation of half of these boats : we had to pick them up in Deauville and repatriate them to Le Havre. Participating students volunteered to pick them up, including Pierre, Valérian, Thibault and Hector, all students at EM Normandie.
“If all goes well, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t blow up the Parisian crews!”
This Friday, March 25, of course, the boats are thoroughly inspected before the start of the festivities. Pierre, in his 3rd year at EM Normandie, is captain of the crew: “We string the bowline knots to moor the boat well!” His colleague Thibault inspects the sails of the boat: “It’s a J/80, a small sailboat where there is still a way to get around, with the good weather, it’s going to be cool overall!”
These students are obviously experts but with them, on D-Day, on the boats, there will also be less experienced comrades.this is also the purpose of the competition, this is what Valérian explains: “The goal is to get them to touch everything, from the helm to the sails, it’s pretty great, we create memories, friends, we’re not here to spit on each other, everything is done in a good spirit and in a good spirit of competition.” Certainly, but still, if they could beat the teams of the Parisian schools, it would not be bad, jokes Thibault: “If all goes well, there’s no reason we can’t blow them up!”
The students hope that the people of Le Havre will respond and that there will be many to encourage them, rejoices Hector: “Of course, the best way to have an unobstructed view of the race is to follow us out to sea by boat, so the Le Havre owners will certainly invite a lot of fans on board! But even if we don’t have of boat to follow, the departure or the arrival on the harbor or even the beach, it’s not bad!”
The prize-giving evening on Sunday at 5 p.m. is open to everyone.
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