Tears and cannon for the descent of the Seine Armada ... - Le Nouvel Observateur

CAUDEBEC-EN-Caux (France / Seine-Maritime) (AFP) – More than 100 km of black banks of the world, sails billowing and sailors overlooking the Seine from the mast: Armada Rouen ended Sunday with a sixth “Great Parade” emotionally charged, to an estimated 2 million people a crowd.

“We do not get tired,” joked Emilian, an elderly lady came to picnic with family on the banks of Caudebec-en-Caux (Seine-Maritime), half-way down the Seine between Rouen and the sea While these are more or less the same tall ships returning every five years, “we’re always happy to see them go,” she said, while the three-masted Polish Dar Mlodziezy seems to touch the bridge deck Brotonne the top of the mast.

Moored

for ten days in Rouen, where they were welcomed aboard hundreds of thousands of spectators, the first boats set off in the early morning for the river parade: 120 km meander to the sea about nine hours. Despite the time, tens of thousands of people had already gathered on the port to say goodbye.

Among them, Morgan, 24, in tears before the Cuauhtemoc, one of the stars of the rally, while the barque of the Mexican Navy has set sail.

She says she fell in love with Ricardo, 27, a marine vessel, Norman during his brief stay. “It was love at first sight,” she said with a sob. “We should normally review in February. It is I who will go to Mexico,” says the young Rouen, who works with the elderly. “It’s really hard to see him go.”

Cuauhtemoc, 90 meters of white shell, it is the darling of the public of the Armada. There has also never missed a single edition since the first in 1989. This superb training ship down the Seine with some 70 sailors perched in the five floors of the wing.

“Always one or two weddings” Franco-Mexican

His sailors are still very popular among the Normans. “Each edition of the Armada, it ends with one or two marriages between Mexican and French sailors,” says Pascal Carbonié a passionate Rouen Armada.

Caudebec-en-Caux, quarantine ship participants from twelve countries are expected especially during the parade: the show is provided by drivers who take turns Seine aboard tall ships. Navigation indeed requires a particular expertise in the narrow passages between Rouen and Caudebec and most maritime part between Caudebec and Le Havre. The pilots board vessels by joining aboard houseboats, even without the slow boats.

Meanwhile, the mood music played on the dock welcomed the various ships as it should be: “Kalinka” for Mir, huge three-masted Russian (110 meters long) or a Brazilian air for Cisne Branco, a training ship of the Navy of Brazil.

Gothenburg, a replica of a three-masted Swedish eighteenth century, provides the show by launching a volley of gunfire that smoke out the Seine and terrorize children.

But the most impressive star of the Armada in 2013, the Russian four-masted Kruzenshtern (114 m long), will not leave until Wednesday Rouen: Due to the height of the mast, it must wait for a tide very low to pass under the bridge deck Tancarville, which dominates the Seine estuary 50 m.

last Grand parade brought together 2 million people on the banks of the Seine in 2008. The edition of this year “is certainly one of the busiest,” he told AFP the prefect of Seine-Maritime, Pierre-Henry Maccioni.