Epic voyages
“You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time toward the open sea…”, Bernard Moitessier humorously explained on board Joshua in his wonderful book “The Long Way”.
This cult book has inspired thousands of recreational sailors and hundreds of ocean racers, from Titouan Lamazou to Philippe Poupon, Jean-Luc Van den Heede, Loïck Peyron, Florence Arthaud (whose father Jacques published Moitessier’s books) and Philippe Jeantot. The latter, before winning the BOC Challenge, a solo round-the-world race with stops, and later creating the Vendée Globe, built a sturdy 13.4-meter steel cruising sailboat to explore the globe and the open seas. Thursday August 22, 1968. Summer had passed with the May revolt.
The day before, Soviet tanks had entered Prague in Czechoslovakia. At the helm of his red steel ketch Joshua, named after Joshua Slocum, the first sailor to solo circumnavigate the globe between 1895 and 1898 on The Spray, Bernard Moitessier set off from Plymouth in the extraordinary Golden Globe Challenge. The experienced sailor, not much inclined towards competition, had hesitated for a long time before accepting the organizers’ invitation…
Bernard Moitessier, offshore cruising “guru”
The Sunday Times offered a gold globe and 5,000 pounds to the sailor who could complete a solo circumnavigation via the three great capes – Good Hope, Leeuwin, and Horn – and return first to Plymouth. There was no mass start like in other races.
Each participant was free to start from anywhere beyond the 40th degree of North latitude between June 1 and October 31. On this rustic 12 meter steel sailboat, built by the Méta shipyard in Tarare in the Rhône, Moitessier, who was leading the race around the world, decided to continue sailing on towards Polynesia instead of heading to Europe, covering a total of 38,000 miles. The two-time Cape Horner, who let his hair and beard grow, funded his boat with his first book royalties, even rigging it with repurposed telegraph poles and sealing his ventilators with cut-up inner tubes, “borrowed” polar clothing from explorer Paul-Émile Victor… He was like a philosopher of the sea, a sage with the air of a hermit, guru and druid. Moitessier could spend hours at the chart table, meditating with his coffee mug, writing, rolling his cigarettes with his feet, sending updates to shore using a slingshot to shoot film rolls and letters when he passed a cargo ship.
“Setting out from Plymouth to return there became like setting out from nowhere to return from nowhere…”, the poet navigator said to himself.
No one knew how to recount and convey the sea better than him. Antoine, the former singer with his eternal flowery shirts, discovered sailing by chance in the summer of 1969 on a beach dinghy. He was hooked right away. Fascinated, he devoured Moitessier’s books. Five years later, deciding to put his singing career on hold to travel, he set off on Om, a heavy 14 meter steel schooner, also built at the same yard as Joshua. Over six years and 40,000 miles, Antoine prudently sailed around the globe, mostly alone, as his friends eventually preferred a more conventional land-based life. While Moitessier enjoyed navigating far offshore before “settling” in Polynesia, the hedonist Antoine roamed the world at a leisurely pace, savoring the pleasures of each stop.
With his “circumnavigator” experience confirmed, he had a new, smaller, lighter boat built that was easier to handle when sailing solo. Voyage was just 10 meters long, and was once again built by Méta, this time from Strongall, a thick aluminum used for Tamata, his spiritual father’s last sailboat. Between films, books and travel guides, Antoine happily continued his world tour on board a 12.5m catamaran, optimizing his boat and benefiting from various innovations offered by the yards.
Cement boats on chicken wire frameworks
Jérôme Poncet and Gérard Janichon, two students aged 16 and 17, living at the foot of the Alps, were chatting. The first had done a bit of cruising with his family. The second had never set foot on a boat, but dreamed aloud of sailing around Cape Horn. Five years later, in 1969, the friends built a molded wooden cutter – mahogany and pine boards. Joshua weighed 13 tons and was 12 meters long.
With this light, simple boat designed by the brilliant, multitalented architect Michel Joubert, Poncet and Janichon sailed over 55,000 miles in nearly five years, getting close to the poles at 80 and 68 degrees North and South respectively. While Moitessier advocated solo sailing, the duo reassured future “globe floaters”. Janichon recounted their adventure, asserting: “What matters is not achieving feats, but realizing oneself by living!” Like Moitessier, their book, also published by Arthaud, struck a chord, freeing sailors up to dream of the open seas. Yards offered sturdy sailboats that were increasingly easy-to-handle. Automatic pilots improved, and sails became more reliable.
Seaworthy, increasingly well equipped, designed for sailing far with large crews, they proved attractive… Moitessier, who was to offshore cruising what Tabarly was to ocean racing, inspired vocations and much more. After May 1968 and the 1973 oil crisis, mindsets had changed. While some went to raise goats in Aveyron or Cantal, others dreamed of sailing. They often had little experience, except for a few summer outings. But that was not a problem! Moitessier, Poncet, Janichon and others had done it. This was also the start of “amateur building”, particularly with ferrocement.
With a trowel, people built their hulls themselves in a garden, along a river, on a friend’s spare bit of land… with mortar on a frame of wire mesh typically used for chicken or rabbit cages. The building technique may have raised a smile, but it proved effective, even though the boats were excessively heavy and therefore slow. While some realized their dream and headed to the Caribbean and then the Pacific, after giving up everything, others experienced the sea vicariously. Some hulls never touched the water, after being abandoned during construction and left to rot. Other dreamers, surprised by the technicality of sailing and discovering they did not have “sea legs”, stopped at the edge of the trade winds in “parking marinas” in the Canary Islands, where wanderers had set down their anchors for good for decades.
Thierry Lhermitte’s family adventure: Atlantic bound
The famous actor from Les Bronzés and Le Père Noël est une ordure was also a passionate sailor, having completed a number of courses and a few races as a crew member, admitting that he could “get by”. He dreamed of a long family cruise to the tropics. In 1987, the project took shape, and Bénéteau lent him an Oceanis 430, a cruiser designed by Philippe Briand a year earlier, which soon became one of the yard’s flagships. This fast and comfortable boat enjoyed so much success that 430 units were built! On this sailing model designed for cruising and charters, Thierry Lhermitte’s only request was for them to install a generator. With his wife, their seven-year-old son and one crew member, they left Saint Gilles Croix de Vie, Bénéteau’s home, heading for the Mediterranean. His 14-year-old daughter joined up with the boat during the school holidays.
Thierry Lhermitte then competed in the Transat des Alizés, sailing to the Caribbean, before continuing on to Venezuela and Bermuda, over 18 months. “I am the captain and 100% responsible for my mistakes, like hitting a coral reef in the Bahamas and damaging the keel…”, the actor confessed. “Forced” to return to the mainland to perform a play with Josiane Balasko and film Les Ripoux 2, Thierry Lhermitte admitted that he was sad to see this long journey coming to an end, concluding in his inimitable style: “If I had not been reasonable, I would have stolen the Oceanis and left without a word!” After their careers, many stars from the worlds of music and sport admitted that they felt the need for a new life, deciding to set sail without any real experience. They included Jacques Brel, who, on his ketch Askoy II, sailed halfway around the world from Antwerp to the Marquesas in the mid-70s, and Renaud, who, after building a 14 meter schooner, completed an Atlantic loop with his family in 1982 despite frequent bouts of seasickness. The tennis player Yannick Noah dreamed of heading off on a long-distance cruise. On board his Wauquiez Kronos 45 catamaran, he crossed the Atlantic before spending several weeks moored up in Jamaica, “the home of Bob Marley”. The basketball player Boris Diaw, happy owner of a Lagoon Seventy 7, took the “long way round” on his world tour. 40 years later, we will see this same need to “get away and escape”, a longing to change lifestyles and enjoy life following the Covid period.
Many young couples, embracing the idea of downsizing, buy a reliable, tested and affordable used boat on Le Bon Coin and set sail at the mercy of the winds. Founded more than a quarter of a century ago, Sail The World, whose website aptly describes this association as dedicated to offshore cruising, quickly realized that this interest was not just a passing trend, but a real need for urgent support and guidance within this community. Yes, people dreamed of freedom… but with structure and safety. Now followed by 11,000 “globe floaters”, STW has set up a range of training programs, from boat maintenance to engines in particular, as well as navigation, medical aspects and survival.
It also offers geolocation beacons that allow those who stay behind on land to follow their loved ones’ journeys. Lastly, STW has developed a collaborative aspect. Its members, roaming marinas across all the continents, must report back via the forum on various criteria, including access to services. Based on these reports, STW may or may not award a “grand cruise” label.
Rallies for first-time sailors
Long before the creation of STW, Guy Plantier, a seasoned sailor and owner of a comfortable Amel, came up with a brilliant idea: to organize the Transat des Alizés, rallying enthusiasts together to take part in a rally race, sailing from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to the Caribbean, with a stopover in Morocco or the Canary Islands. The concept: crossing the Atlantic in a fleet, at your own pace, with a duty to assist any boats in trouble. This idea was appealing, and many first-time sailors felt reassured and successfully made the east-to-west crossing.
This transatlantic rally was a success and was soon followed by the Transat des Passionnés, modeled on the Transat des Alizés, but with the option to use the engine on board when there was no wind. Later, the ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers) continued this “mission” with the same success, but included more chartered boats, allowing enthusiasts to experience a perfectly guided Atlantic crossing. For several decades, Alain and Claudine Caradec, on their sturdy sailboat Kotik, led hundreds of amateur sailors to Cape Horn, through the channels of Patagonia, to South Georgia and to Antarctica, for those eager to discover the Far South. Nothing has ever been too beautiful to take to the sea.