 Professional sailor, immersed in sailing since he discovered it a nine years old, Sébastien Audigane, has posted 40 years of impressive victories: from Lasers to solo sailing followed by 10 years of offshore sailing, winner of the Jules Verne Trophy in 2005 on the Maxi catamaran Orange; he is one of the great French sailors. Today at the Naval College Grand Prix, the largest sportboat event in Europe which takes place this week in Brest and brings together more than 600 boats, Sébastien Audigane will take the helm of one of the LONGTZE Premier. After a first afternoon of sailing, he describes the sportboat he has just been able to sail on Bretton waters.
Sebastian, can you tell us why you are here for this regatta and your impressions of Longtze Premier after your first day sailing ?
First of all, I am here because this is a very good regatta and a great body of water to sail on. I was born close to here and have sailed a lot here as well. Alain Daoulas has put together a great regatta for  modern sportboats for several years now. I was supposed to sail on the Open 6.50 when Luc Gellusseau proposed sailing on the new Longtze Premier sportboat built in China. We also wanted to promote our efforts for a Vendee Globe project in 2012.We put the boat together this morning and sailed this afternoon.The boat is lively, fast and well thought out; the genoa trimming system is interesting for example.The boat is simple and easy to handle. Is there anything you don't like? Not for the moment ...ha ha ! Do the tides and current have an effect on the sailing here?  Yes, it can be quite tricky sometimes because there is a central river of current, back eddies, leftover structures underwater from WWII and underwater islands which all can change the currents.
What are you expecting from the regatta ?
It is somewhat complicated because we have only two boats today and will be racing against the Melges and the Open 7.50 but this will allow us to learn about the boat and gauge the performance directly against other sportboats. What are your projects for the next few months ?
We have been working on the Vendee Globe project for two years which takes alot of time but we will will be sailing other races in between on either monohulls or possibly on multi-hulls like when we trained against Oracle on Bank Populaire.
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