Race 1 - Day 28
Crew Diary - Race 1 Day 28: Liverpool to Punta del Este
17 September

Sylvie Godquin
Sylvie Godquin
Team Unicef
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The French Connection of Unicef

Don't know if it's the case on many boats but Unicef has the privilege to have on board, for this Leg 1, three representatives of the French flag.

Apart from the French, Unicef is a quite international boat as we have one Russian, one South African, one Swedish, one Swiss, one Australian and one Kiwi. Still, a question remains for us French people as we haven't totally understood whether Scottish representatives were foreigners or not. For our point of view and for our understanding of their language, we will include our two Scottish in the Foreign Party !

But let's now concentrate on our lives, three little Frenchies in the middle of the ocean on a British boat.

First of all, let me introduce you the gang :

We have the dynamic Anne-Lise (from... London!): some members of the crew discovered yesterday that her name was not Analyse.

Then we have Seb-on-deck (to be pronounced with a very heavy French accent) who is also known as Sebastien from St Nazaire, and at last, your servant Sylvie from Paris.

You will not be surprised that we decided to focus our reflections on 2 very important subjects: the food and the language...

The food, well, it's difficult to decide what to begin with. our chief Victualler Alison was really kind to avoid baked beans every other day in the daily menus but, still, the beans (all sort of beans, most of which we had never heard of about before) remain a strong ingredient of many of the recipes. We - sort of - got used to it! We must admit that none of us are great chefs of French cuisine but we are trying to make efforts for nice dressings and seasonings which 1) don't create any enthusiasm from some of our fellow crew members as they immediately, without testing, add some kind of orange (or brown) spicy sauce and 2) avoid when they are cooking themselves to take the slightest initiative in this matter. This would be a lie to include everyone in this group as some are really keen on French cuisine and this is even a common subject of discussion during watches on deck (isn't it, Nate?!).

Also when we are cooking, we are due to make some very common English dishes which are totally unknown on the other side of the Channel: ask a French to make some custard, pudding, porridge from scratch without a recipe, well, the success is not always au rendez-vous! And, last but not least, another mystery for French taste: Marmite (the colour, the aspect and the taste!)

Enough about the food, let's speak about...speaking.

Our crew, even our skipper, is desperately and nicely trying to remember the few words of French they learned at school some time ago. So we come up with the ever coming question: what do you say in French? We nearly decided to organise French courses every day with different levels (as some are perfectly fluent in French) and a French speaking test could have taken place in Punta del Este after our arrival with, of course, a bottle of (French) wine as a prize!

The second point is the way we speak. Yes, we all have a very strong French accent, me in particular. And, suddenly, all my watch caught a very strong accent too. Is it contagious? I would say that it is contagiously funny for them (and for me too). My top success this month is the way I pronounce "foulies". As it became the official way for my watch to call our oilies, I don't know anymore what is the proper pronunciation! Seb-on-deck has got a very personal way of mixing French and English, plus a bit of mime, and at the end of the day, makes himself understand pretty well. Not sure that all of his very funny remarks are always hitting the public though! Analyse, living in GB, is often our go-between but no-one can have a doubt on her origins!

Last but not least: how do we understand all these English conversations, orders, jokes? Well, very variously and at the middle of an evolution, it's not always easy to ask, "Can you repeat please?!" But we manage, as do our foreign non-English crew members who we can understand perfectly!

But we must say that we highly appreciate our daily French moments when the French gang gets reunited either on deck or in the galley :-)

Grosses bises de la part des Frenchies du bateau Unicef!

Sylvie with Sebastien and Anne-Lise