Long distance sailing lecture at Open Yard Weekend

02/07/2019
Laura and Marco
Laura and Marco

As the tradition has it, there will be an interesting lecture on Saturday evening at the Open Yard weekend 24 August 2019. The lecture is arranged by Hallberg-Rassy and will be held in English by Laura Braive and Marco Thyssen.

Marco was born many moons ago (longer ago than he cares to admit) in a small harbour town called Whangarei in New Zealand's Northland during a hot summer when the seagulls were calling out to him to smell the sweet sea air. Attending primary school in Auckland, the city of a million sails, further helps to establish his credentials as being square of jaw, stern of eye and a true seaman. Thus the image of the intrepid seafarer, that comes naturally from birth to every Kiwi, seems to be guaranteed.

Further, Marco built Ngahue 00 all alone at the tender age of 5. He will probably gloss over the fact that upon its launching in a quiet corner of Hamilton Lake in New Zealand, Ngahue 00 sank (well, kind of; it floated thanks to her wooden construction)

Marco did the only wise thing available to man (boy!) and worked hard to save lots and lots of money to purchase Hallberg-Rassy 29 Ngahue I, Hallberg-Rassy 37 Ngahue II, Hallberg-Rassy 43 Ngahue III and now Hallberg-Rassy 53 Ngahue IV.

Laura, the co-skipper of Ngahue IV, was born near Liège, where the river Meuse flows steadily through the Belgian countryside. She afterwards moved to Saint Georges-sur-Meuse from where she came to sailing.

Laura spent a week on board Regina Laska in September 2016, benefitting from Leon's excellent teaching skills and methods in all matters related to sailing.

There remains one matter to explain now: how did Marco, who for years was an adept of single-handed sailing (despite having two hands - he never really understood the logic of that terminology) come to, well, doublehanded sailing with Laura? His reasoning was perfect simplicity: Laura would like to sail more than she can do at Du Vent et des Voiles and me having a boat with lots of space.

In their lecture, Laura and Marco will tell about their so far long distance sailing and planned circumnavigation in a Hallberg-Rassy 53.

Application needed

The lecture will be held on Saturday 24 August 2019 at 19.00 in the marina area, in the big white building close to the mountain, and we will start with dinner, followed by the lecture. As the number of seats to the lecture are limited and dinner with beverage will be served, we request a prepayment of tickets from you. The Saturday night lecture including dinner costs SEK 410 (roughly 40 Euros) per person. Please give us your Visa, Eurocard or Mastercard number, expiry date, CVX2-code (CVX2-code is the three last digits right of the signature on the back of the card), name, address, mobile phone number, email address and your written agreement for us charging the above mentioned amount. For safety reasons we do not want you to email text with facts about your credit card. Please send either a photo or a scanned hand writt­en letter of the data to info@hallberg-rassy.se. For Swedish citizens, please use Swedish Bankgiro 541-2051 or Swish 123 346 92 93.

Parking and to see the yard and the boats in the water is free of charge.