PAGE 22 • AUTUMN 2006 THE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SAILING ASSOCIATION
ASA MEMBER BOOK REVIEW • DEBBIE GRAHAM
Title: Moitessier: A Sailing Legend at sea and wrote: “When I go on deck at dawn, I
Author: Jean-Michel Barrault sometimes shout my joy at being alive, watching the sky
Publisher: Sheridan House, 2005 turning white above the long streaks of foam on this
Price: Paperback $19.95 colossally powerful, beautiful sea.” The flip side of
euphoria, for Moitessier, would be heartbreak. On three
Bernard Moitessier was preparing for a solo voyage around occasions, his beloved boats were shipwrecked on distant
the world in 1968. He had sailed around the world on his rocky shores. Through his epic sailing adventures, his
honeymoon and wrote a book entitled Cape Horn: the philosophy and his writings, he became a spiritual leader
Logical Route that he was and advisor for sailors everywhere.
unhappy with. In a rush to
finish the book, he felt he’d Moitessier: A Sailing Legend, written by his good friend,
not done justice to his Jean-Michel Barrault, describes a complex man. Barrault
experience in the southern gives insight to Moitessier’s life as only a true and
ocean. Suffering from a
knowing friend can. Moitessier struggled with life on
shipwreck of the soul, he
land. He wanted to save the world and could not
hoped for absolution with a
understand why people were reluctant to change. Yet, at
new book to be written at sea
the same time, he had his own personal dragons to slay
when he was approached by
Moitessier was a sailor, writer, philosopher and ecologist.
a journalist from the British
In awe of the beauty of creativity, he longed to help
weekly, the Sunday Times.
humanity to learn, to teach and to pass the gifts on.
The paper was organizing the
Debbie Graham is a USCG Master Mariner and owner of
Golden Globe, the first solo
Island Fever Sailing School, located in northeast Oklahoma on
non-stop race around the
beautiful Grand Lake. Sailing has been the adventure of her life
world. Hoping Moitessier
and she continues to spread the word about the joy of sailing to
would participate, they tried to entice the French sailor
all who’ll listen in her own little corner of the world.
with the prize money of 5,000 pounds and a golden
globe. Moitessier was appalled and angered by the
thought of his ultimate challenge being turned into a
contest and the southern ocean a vacant lot on which to
hold a circus. In a sailing article he wrote: “In a passage
like this, a man must look into himself without facing a
competitor. I disapprove of a race; it makes you lose
sight of the essential: a voyage to your own utter limits,
this search for a profound truth with as sole witness the
sea, the wind, the infinitely big, the infinitely small.”
Moitessier entered the race with the idea of winning,
collecting the prize money without saying thank you,
auctioning off the golden globe and leaving without a
word for the Sunday Times as a public statement of his
contempt for the paper’s project.
Moitessier was the fastest and the most probable winner.
When he was expected in the English Channel, he had
already abandoned the race and showed up off Cape
Town, South Africa. His only form of communication was
a slingshot with which he flung a film canister with a
note to the world onto the deck of a passing ship. The
message read, “I am continuing non-stop toward the
Pacific Islands because I am happy at sea and perhaps
to save my soul.” After spending seven months at sea he
turned his back on what he called the “false gods” and
kept going. Here was a man who sailed simply, using old
telephone poles for masts, navigating with a sextant and
seeing no need for a two-way radio. He found inner peace
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