Titouan Lamazou and Loïck Peyron enjoy a parade down the Champs-Elysées after finishing first and second in the original Vendée Globe in 1989/90. By now the French public – and more than a few French boardrooms – had taken solo ocean racing to their hearts. Peyron was being doubly applauded for his extraordinary Southern Ocean rescue of Philippe Poupon, towing Poupon’s capsized 60-footer around under sail until head to wind, when with Poupon’s mizzen cut away the Briand-design (now a sloop…) righted itself
For the ceremony the Queen used the
sword that was used by her predecessor Queen Elizabeth I to knight Sir Francis Drake, the first Englishman to complete a circumnavigation with his crew. The love of all things yachting appeared
now squarely back in the hands of the British and it was about to get a boost with the announcement of the first Golden Globe Race. The Sunday Times newspaper in London had agreed to underwrite the first ever singlehanded, non-stop race around the world and quite a number of British sailors entered. The odds were good that the winner would be a Brit and it turned out to be the case when Robin Knox-Johnston claimed the victory. There is no doubt that Robin’s win was
a big deal, especially in England, but it was another sailor in the same race, a French- man by the name of Bernard Moitessier who in his own way eclipsed Knox-John- ston’s victory. Moitessier had started to meditate
during the voyage to calm his nerves and through his meditation he realised that his stress was being caused by the thought of returning to land and all of the glitz and publicity that would surround his arrival. He sent a message to his Times corre-
spondent announcing that he was with- drawing from the race – the message was sent by firing it by slingshot onto the deck of a passing ship, stating simply: ‘parce que
42 SEAHORSE
je suis heureux en mer et peut-être pour sauver mon ame’ (‘because I am happy at sea and perhaps to save my soul’). This was the kind of move that
endeared him to each and every French citizen and once and for all sealed sailing as ‘the’ national sport of France. Moitessier had done what Tabarly had done after his Transat victory: shown the British sailing scene his middle finger, another favourite pastime of his fellow countrymen. Through the 1970s and 1980s and
beyond the French and UK sailing scenes followed parallel courses. England played host to a number of Whitbread Round the World races and large crowds descended on the south coast of England to see off the fleet. I was lucky enough to participate in a
number of those Whitbread races in the 1980s and it didn’t go without notice that the French sailors were very different from the rest of us. There was something unique and indi-
vidualistic about each one of them. We would all clean up and shave for the finish of each leg and would make a dash for the nearest shower as soon as we stepped onto land. Clean clothes, freshly shaven, all good, but I would notice that many of the French crews, days after arriving, were still wearing the clothes that they had worn all the way across the Southern Ocean and neither a comb nor a razor, let alone hot
running water, had come in close proxim- ity. And if it was the winning team you could still see patches where the cham- pagne had been sprayed. There was another incident that made
me realise the French were profoundly dif- ferent from the rest of the sailing world. I had been recruited at the very last minute, as in two days before the start of the 1989/90 Whitbread race to join Fazisi, the first and by happenstance last Soviet Union entry in the race. The boat was banana shaped, rough as guts and barely ready when I boarded the night before the start. I was below packing my gear when I
heard a knock on the hull. It was Conny van Rietschoten, the venerable Dutch sailor who had won two earlier editions of the race. He was asking for permission to come onboard. He cleared the lifelines and looked around with interest. His interest turned to dismay when he looked below at the stark, rough interior with bare aluminium frames and no standing head- room. He left walking down the dock shaking his head. Ten minutes later there was another
knock on the hull. It was Eric Tabarly ask- ing for permission to board. He cast his eye over the deck and I could see him smiling. He asked to go below and his eyes lit up when he saw how stark the interior was. ‘Très bien,’ he said simply. ‘Très bien.’ I was at sea sailing alone across the
HENRI THIBAULT/ALEA
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