Sailing catamaran from La Grande-Motte: the villa Saturday

How it came about

The idea turned up in the villa weekend chat twelve days before the trip. On 17 August the organiser wrote: “Here’s an idea for Saturday, 29 August! We can get out to sea on a sailing catamaran, a trip from 14:00 to 17:00. The catamaran will genuinely be under sail, so the route will be an unusual one: we’ll head further out to sea instead of just running along the coastline. We’ll anchor up, and there’ll be plenty of time to swim.” Then, about the boat itself: “a very big catamaran with an enormous sail”, places out on the nets, and a skipper who, by her account, had crossed the Atlantic on this vessel more than once - “a very friendly chap, promised to give us a proper blow”.

In the community channel the announcement was shorter: “On 29 August we’re off on a proper sea adventure. A big sports catamaran, a huge sail and speed, we have never sailed anything like it. If you want to come with us, put a plus in the poll.”

After that it went the way it usually goes with us: arithmetic first, then doubts. Taking the whole boat needed eighteen people at the very least, and on 20 August the organiser admitted in the chat that “our friends and comrades are keeping quiet”, while she looked for a second boat owner in parallel: by that evening nine or ten had signed up. Someone joked about the rowing-boat meme where one person rows and the fourth is a dog being sick over the side. Someone else was uneasy about going “far out, deep water, and no life jackets”. The answer came back point by point: there are jackets, nobody is heading into the open ocean, the captain is experienced, and we set the route ourselves. On the evening of 22 August a short line landed: “The catamaran is on.”

People got ready in their own way. On the 23rd the chat was asked to throw in songs “we wanted to sing at sea in the breeze”, so the playlist could be put together in advance. On the practical side: bring your own towel. The villa handed out bed linen only, and you’d want a towel for the pool as well as the sea. On the 24th came a reminder about payment, and about getting to the port - we drove there ourselves, sorting out who was at the wheel that Saturday morning.

What made it different from the 8 August catamaran

Three weeks earlier, on 8 August, the community had already been out on a catamaran, so at first glance this reads like a repeat. The boats were different, though, and so was the day.

The 8th was a day-trip catamaran taken for the whole day: a fridge, a plancha with lunch cooked on it, masks and snorkels, a paddleboard, an inflatable platform, a ticket per person. A holiday house on the water, in short. The 29th was a sports sailing catamaran, where the point wasn’t the kit but the sail. The organisers wrote about it themselves afterwards: “This time we weren’t just out for a ride, we were sailing. Sheets, winches, real work with the wind: the captain showed us, the guests had a go. Turns out that hoisting the mainsail is a rather different thing from lying on the netting.”

You can see it in the photographs. In the first frames the catamaran is still in the marina at La Grande-Motte: winches, a solar panel, the mainsail in its cover, the stepped buildings of the seafront behind a forest of masts, the skipper at the mast getting the boat ready. Then the sail is up, the white jib climbing into a blue sky, and two guests are trimming a sheet under the mainsail. No plancha, no platform. Wind and ropes.

How the day went

We left after lunch, as planned: the first frames were taken at half past one, the last just after four. And we went where the announcement had promised, further out into open sea: in the shot of the anchor chain piled on the netting there is no shore at all, just water to the horizon.

At anchor the group did what half of them had signed up for in the first place: swam, sunbathed, stretched out on the netting between the hulls. The organisers later called that netting “the best place for a conversation, tested twice over August”, and the pictures back them up. A guest in a straw hat on deck. A couple up on the bow, foreheads together. A man in a white cap sitting at the front with his back to everyone, watching the distant shore. Hardly a phone in anyone’s hand.

On the way back we steered for the harbour-master’s tower at La Grande-Motte, which shows up in the last frame taken from the water. And that evening the same people, now in 1920s costume, sat down at the long table on the villa terrace: the two-city Mafia had begun, the game the Toulouse team had driven to Montpellier for. One day held the sea and a round that ran deep into the night.

What people said afterwards

The first word came the next day, once everyone had gone their separate ways: “Got home and caught up on sleep already, thank you for organising, it was fun and brilliant, and the catamaran was superb, a great way to finish the summer for me.” The organiser posted the photos taken on board into the chat on 31 August.

We won’t add a verdict of our own. We’ll only say what we noticed ourselves: of the summer’s three trips out, this was the one that felt most like going to sea. Not a picnic that happened to be on water, but a boat under sail and the people who hoisted that sail.

What it cost, and how to get on the next one

The price was named right away, in that same announcement of 17 August: €45 per adult and €20 per child, provided enough people signed up to take the whole catamaran. On 24 August the chat simply said, “whoever is coming on the boat, start sending the money over.” It works the same way as the yacht in July: you pay what the charter costs, not an entry fee. The community doesn’t sell tickets, it gets a group together - which is exactly why this trip hung by a thread for a month, until enough people had signed up.

The sea season didn’t end there either. The fourth trip, an evening cruise on a big vessel, was moved to October by the organiser, and the details are already being chewed over in the chat. The announcement will appear where all three previous trips were born, in the community chat, usually a week to ten days ahead, and places, in the organisers’ words, “go faster than they do for the parties”. If you live in Montpellier or nearby and you fancy a day on the water, be in the chat when the poll goes up.

The full chronicle of the community is in the Events section.