After an 8-day technical stopover in La Rochelle, the departure for the Mediterranean took place on June 15.

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During the first night of sailing, Balthazar showed that she could hold a course upwind without an autopilot and without any of us touching the helm! The boat is certainly perfectly balanced, a feat of the Garcia shipyard.

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The Bay of Biscay was relatively calm and the favorable winds along Portugal allowed us to peak at 12.2 knots.

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On the other hand, calm in Gibraltar then headwinds along Andalusia to Barcelona where we made a second technical stopover to intervene at the top of the mast. The next day, when leaving the dikes, a small sailfish jumped in front of us several times. Encouraging, right ?