Has anyone won as many major IRC prizes as Géry Trentesaux… we very much doubt it. The prolific French skipper has also enjoyed success with his junior J/80 and Tour de France teams but it is his offshore scorecard that would be toughest to match. Fred Augendre has raced both with and against the ‘Courrier King’
A winner
Sixty years old this winter with more than 40 years of offshore racing experience, Géry Trentesaux is proud of a list of achievements that many envy him and that was further enriched last October with an overall victory in the Middle Sea Race. A successful entrepreneur on land who com- petes as an amateur on the water and is proud to perpetuate the Corinthian spirit of his first regattas in the Solent. The French say that ‘only a fool never
changes their mind’. At the end of 2015, at the close of a season that had seen him win the Fastnet Race overall and Sydney Hobart in his class, Géry Trentesaux announced his retirement from IRC to devote himself to one-design racing. How- ever, he returned to business in 2018, and in a great way, ending the season with the
48 SEAHORSE
Middle Sea Race victory at the helm of his JPK 1180 Courrier Recommandé (Regis- tered Mail) In the meantime, however, Trentesaux
had not been bored. Runner-up in the J/80 Worlds in 2016, he then joined the Dragon circuit, where he quickly climbed to 12th place in the international rankings. ‘But I was sincere when I said I was stopping off- shore because, with age, I was having more and more difficulty recovering. It took me 10 days to recover from a Fastnet. I also thought I had “covered” that business! I wanted to move on.’ Later he realised his physical condition
was perhaps not so bad – obviously the sea was still calling. In 2018 opportunity pre- sented itself to take on the JPK yard’s latest design from Jacques Valer: the JPK 1180.
There are opportunities like that that
cannot be refused. But who is this devil of a man, just as at ease on a one-design keel- boat as on a 600-mile ocean race, able to come back after three years away to win at the top level, and probably one of the few to be able to line up on his mantlepiece the three great classic trophies: the Fastnet, Sydney Hobart and Middle Sea Race? August 2015, under the tent erected in
Plymouth for the arrival of the Fastnet fleet. Three French boats – three JPKs – are on the podium of the overall rankings, the red carpet is unrolled for sailors from across the Channel. Géry Trentesaux, overall race winner on the JPK 1080 Courrier du Léon, grabbed the micro- phone. After thanking his crew – all faith- ful to the Courrier cause, who have been sailing with him for ages – he concluded: ‘We love the racing at the RORC. We love racing with you. And we love to beat you.’ ‘We love to beat you’. The man is
always very courteous, but he also likes to provoke. It was undoubtedly the same provocative spirit that led to him mount- ing a small effigy of Che Guevara – not really of his political persuasion – on the bow of his Open 750 Courrier Pop. But behind the irony are complicity and
affection: Géry Trentesaux is probably the most English of the French sailors. It was on the English side of the Channel that he started to build his list of achievements.
JM LIOT/DPPI
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