Bernard Moitessier

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Bernard Moitessier (April 10, 1925 – June 16, 1994) was a French

.

Vagabond of the South Seas

Moitessier grew up next to the sea in

, where he found work with a medical company whilst writing a book (Vagabond des Mers du Sud) about his experience. He then moved to the south of France, where he married Françoise de Cazalet, the daughter of family friends, with whom he would later sail the world.

With the money from his book, he commissioned a 39-foot steel ketch which he named Joshua, in honour of

Solo around the world

Discussions between Moitessier and his friends

for the first to circumnavigate alone, nonstop, and unassisted, and for the fastest elapsed time. Somewhat reluctantly, Moitessier decided to sail Joshua to Plymouth to meet the criterion for the race of leaving from an English port, but left months after several smaller and therefore slower boats.

He departed Plymouth on August 23, 1968 and, after a quick passage south, he was off the Cape of Good Hope by October 20, 1968. In the process of transferring a canister of film and reports for the Sunday Times to a freighter, he allowed the bow of Joshua to be drawn into the stern of the ship, bending the bowsprit, which he was able to fix with winches on board.^[3] A couple of days later Joshua was knocked flat by a breaking wave but he was able to recover the damage. A succession of gales and calm periods characterised his trip through the Southern Ocean till he passed Cape Horn on 5 Feb 1969. In all this time he got no feedback on the progress of other competitors from local radio stations.

After the period of calms in the Indian Ocean, where Moitessier became depressed and discovered yoga as a means of controlling his moods, he started to think of not returning to Europe, which he saw as a cause of many of his worries. The idea of continuing his voyage on again to the Galapagos Islands strengthened as he passed through the Pacific, though he was still determined to complete the circumnavigation first. Finally, having passed Cape Horn, he had a crisis when a south-easterly gale started blowing him north again, and his account of his thought processes before he turned for the Cape of Good Hope reflects inner turmoil. However, the manner of his resignation, as he tells the story, is a key part of his reputation. By firing a note using a slingshot onto the deck of a passing ship, he was able to get a message to his London Times correspondent, stating: "parce que je suis heureux en mer et peut-être pour sauver mon âme" ("because I am happy at sea and perhaps to save my soul").^[4]

The decision to abandon is instructive of Moitessier's character. Although driven and competitive, he passed up a chance at instant fame and a world record, and sailed on for three more months. Sir Robin Knox-Johnston went on both to win the race, as its only legitimate finisher, and to become the first man to circumnavigate the globe alone without stopping.

Although he abandoned the race, Moitessier still circumnavigated the globe, crossing around the

, setting another record for the longest nonstop passage by a yacht, with a total of 37,455 nautical miles in 10 months. Despite heavy weather and a couple of severe knockdowns, he even contemplated rounding the Horn again. However, he decided that he and Joshua had had enough and, on June 21, 1969, put in at Tahiti, from where he and his wife had set out for Alicante, Spain, a decade earlier. He thus had completed his second personal circumnavigation of the world, including the previous voyage with his wife.

It is impossible to say whether Moitessier would have won if he had completed the race, as he would have been sailing in different weather conditions than Knox-Johnston. Based on the fact that his time, from the start to Cape Horn, was around 77% of that of Knox-Johnston, it would have been an extremely close race. However Moitessier is on record as stating that he would not have won.^[1] Moitessier's book of the experience, The Long Way, tells the story of his voyage as a spiritual journey as much as a sailing adventure and is still regarded as a classic of sailing and adventuring literature.

Subsequent life

It took Moitessier two years to finish the book about his trip to Tahiti, during which time he met Ileana Draghici with whom he had a son, Stephan. They moved to the atoll of Ahe, where Moitessier attempted to cultivate fruit and vegetables. Ileana encouraged him to move to America to complete films about his sailing but he left, after two years, in his boat Joshua.

Wreck of the 'Joshua'

In December 1982 Moitessier was offered a yacht charter by film actor

After further travels, Moitessier returned to Paris to write his autobiography, Tamata and the Alliance.

Moitessier was an environmental activist who protested against

waterfront in Tahiti.

Death

Moitessier died of prostate

slingshots

, creating some elements of a shrine.

Partial list of works

• Un Vagabond des mers du sud 1960. Translated by Rene Hague as Sailing to the Reefs.
  ISBN 9780713659078
• Cap Horn à la voile: 14216 milles sans escale 1967. Translated by Inge Moore as Cape Horn: The Logical Route., Adlard Coles Nautical (30 Jun. 2003),
  ISBN 9780713667073
• La Longue route; seul entre mers et ciels 1971. Translated as The Long Way by William Rodarmor, 1973,
  ISBN 978-0924486845
• Tamata et l'alliance 1993. Translated as Tamata and the Alliance by William Rodarmor, 1995,
  ISBN 978-0924486777
• Voile, Mers Lointaines, Iles et Lagons 1995. Translated as A Sea Vagabond's World by William Rodarmor, 1998,
  ISBN 9781493042807

References