Mon enfants sont navigateur de voile

My children are sailors.  That is their tribe, that is where they belong.   They feel at home at a yacht club, happy on the water, and, just like anyone else, they relate to the people that love what they love.  

Part of the plan to come to France hinged on us finding a yacht club for them to practice and potentially race.  The closer our departure came, the more our plan seemed to fall apart.  We had two choices for practice but then both teams were full, there were no boats available, I worried that I

would have to tell them that it wasn't going to work out.  Then, a German coach contacted me with an offer to practice two weekends in Lake Garda, Italy.  Kelly and I decided that the side trip to Lake Garda to a sailing hostel(how cool is that) would be a perfect answer in case the day to day training didn't work out.

The first 5 days we were in Nice, Pete asked politely every day if we could please go check out the yacht club.  I was hesitant, not only because my limited French would pose a problem but also because I was worried about getting bad news.  The day Kelly left, bad for me anyway, I decided the kids and I would give it a shot.  We walked(2.5 miles) to the Club Nautique de Nice and met their Opti coach-The laser coach was in Hyeres doing a training week.- He seemed optimistic(ha, ha) that they would be able to practice with either the laser coach, Nicolas or a Swiss guy, Oliver, who was an Olympian...One more time, I emailed Nicolas and he immediately replied back to meet him Wednesday at 10am- that was today.

Our day could not have gone better.  We hiked to the Yacht Club to be there on time for our meeting.  Nicolas turned out so much better than expected.  He speaks heavily accented English but said they could practice Wednesdays and Saturdays with the laser group.  The club boats are battered but they are boats! And we hustled home, had a big lunch, and got back in time for the afternoon practice.  This is our second attempt to plug in here(church was first) and so far we have not been met with any of what I felt might be the classic French Resistance(ha, ha).  Now we have 3 times a week to make friends, practice what we love, and connect rather than just observe.