About

I’ve always wanted to sail. Never knew what it was that attracted me, just that it felt “right”, like when Bernard Moitessier, due to win the 68 Golden Globe Award, decides to carry on through the Indian, instead of instant fame and a world record.

It all started when I was 18, when a college friend invited me on the family boat, a 33 feet Melody from Jeanneau, and as well from another century. No GPS, no furling headsail, but a state-of-the art goniometer which, sailing out of South Brittany (FR) would help us get a chart position out of radio stations bearings for RTL (based in Luxembourg) and RMC (based in Monte Carlo), along the official coastal radio stations

The first journey to Belle-Ile, mostly achieved by night, left an everlasting impression of freedom and belonging that could only be matched by Moitessier’s comments of his “Longue Route”.

15 years and no sailing

And then it all stopped. Studies, early work, family, all happening when commitment is seemingly limitless. It brutally stopped for 15 years, along with many other things. No more sailing, only the now-and-then lingering feeling that life can only be about this unique and personal challenge, not corporate KPIs, and other less convincing stuff.

So it’s only after putting to an end Corporate and Entrepreneur years, that I was able to resume the learning process initiated two decades earlier. Purchasing a condomaran was the lazy way. But those two decades of intense working life had taken their toll, and lazy it was.

It’s been a fantastic start. The first sail out of La Rochelle en route toward Barcelona, via La Coruña, Lisboa, Cadix and the Balearic islands during that summer has been a tremendous adventure. She performed quite well, at least to my standards, didn’t feel at all to push toward laziness under sail, and I could again meditate over the limitless boundaries of a starry night watch.

23.000 miles in the Med

That’s not such a big sea, so after just a few years of discoveries, we started heading back for places we liked, from Symi to Mahon, from Venice to Sidi Bou Said, wintering in Barcelona, Menorca, Corsica, Montenegro, Croatia or Sicily. As far as traveling is concerned, there is little to beat approaching an historic city and drop anchor or dock by its walls.

But after 10 years, we increasingly felt like a fish in a barrel, giving more thoughts to the limitless sailing waiting for us off Gibraltar. We knew the condomaran, a perfect companion for our Med program, wouldn’t fit the profile for more extreme latitudes.

70th parallel

In the North, that goes up to Jan Mayen, a small group of islands sitting 310 mn NE of Iceland. It’s north of the Lofoten Islands (Norway), it’s the latitude of Qequetarsuaq of Greenland, mentioned here just for the fantastic music of its name.

In the South, it goes all the way down to the Antarctica peninsula, South of the Sandwich islands, South of Kergelen and Crozet Islands, South of Tasmania and New Zealand.

Sailing these areas and many more in between is one of our dreams. But it requires a sailing cultural adjustment. This is the story of it.