I like to read for the surprises that books give me. And just as I began Rémi Le Calvez's story "And if I crossed the Atlantic in a sailboat", I didn't expect many surprises. This young man tells the story of his first Atlantic crossing on an RM 10.60 with a crew he met the day before the start. This story is not unfamiliar to me - nor to the readers of Bateaux.com! - since it is Captain Rémi who has already given us this story in the form of a 10 episode web series, broadcast on Bateaux.com ( if you missed it, I suggest you watch it again from episode one ).
Despite the knowledge of the story, I swallowed this - small - pocket-sized book in a few hours! In these 125 pages, we understand the path of this young entrepreneur who prefers to sell his first company to go out into the world, to keep his freedom to "run his life". If the transat in a sailing boat serves as a framework for this book, Rémi comes back on some anecdotes of his life as a traveller which take us out of our world of sailors.
Exactly, this sailor's world is not really described by Rémi. The pure and hardcore lovers of the right term, of the marine expression will undoubtedly be disappointed by this story. For Rémi says it from the beginning: "I know nothing about the sea!". And rather than trying to find out how a sailboat moves forward, to understand how you take stock, to want to adjust the spinnaker to move forward faster, this young traveller looks instead at the reasons for being stuck with four boys in a closed universe, the relationships between people, the bonds that are created, the tensions that rise..
Without forgetting the nature in the middle of which the sailboat evolves. If Rémi tells the story of the many dolphins that come to play with the bow, he will also remember for a long time the seagull that came to aim at him when there are thousands of free kilometers all around!
Captain Rémi's book is not a great moment of literature, but it reads without difficulty and offers us to share the pleasure that the young man has in discovering everything when everything becomes possible when we dare.
Rémi Le Calvez - What if I crossed the Atlantic on a sailboat?
- Editions Les aventures du Capitaine Rémi
- 17 x 11 cm
- 125 pages
- 9.90 euros
