Thierry Lhermitte: a family tour of the Atlantic
In 1987, the actor of the Splendide troupe offered himself a one-year interlude aboard an Oceanis 430. Accompanied by his wife and two children, the actor wanted to realize a dream he had been thinking about for a long time. An experienced sailor, it is the loss of a loved one that pushed him to realize this family project.
After preparing the boat in Vendée, the Lhermitte family headed for the Mediterranean, then crossed the Atlantic, reached the West Indies, Venezuela and then took a one-month break in Bermuda. They returned to Europe after 14 months. Today, the actor still sails and participates in communication campaigns for the SNSM.
Jacques Brel: Antwerp-Tahiti in pain
In 1974, Jacques Brel bought a solid 20m yawl to fulfill his dreams of distant travel . On 24 July 1974, he left Antwerp with his partner Maddy and his daughter France. The crew reached the Canary Islands and then made a stopover in Horta in the Azores. There, Jacques Brel had to rush to Brussels to be treated for lung cancer. " By boat ", he will say, " you have to be happy to leave. Otherwise it becomes a castle haunted by a thousand unpleasant, throbbing, and long noises. Wetter than the prisons, one lives in a stinking and sticky soup, heartbreaking. A boat is not big, it becomes tiny. It is not tiring, it becomes harassing, it is the prison. "
After his operation, it is a weakened man who joins the board. The 40 tons of the yawl were very difficult to maneuver. After having reached the Marquesas Islands via Panama, Jacques Brel put an end to his trip and gave his boat to a young American couple. After being abandoned on a New Zealand beach, Askoy's hull was rescued by the master sailmakers who originally outfitted the yacht in 1974. She is currently being restored in a yard in Antwerp.
Renaud : it is not the man who takes the sea, it is the sea which takes the man
In 1982, Renaud embarked with his wife and daughter on a 14m schooner that he built with his own hands. The schooner was named Makhnovtchina in reference to a little known revolution led between 1917 and 1921 by a Ukrainian anarchist: Nestor Makhno. Renaud declared shortly before the departure: " I want to go somewhere else, to see if somewhere else is better. If it's better, I'll stay somewhere else. If it's not so good, I'll come back here. "
Despite a persistent seasickness, Renaud will make an Atlantic loop, via the Canaries and the West Indies. It is on the return transatlantic race that he will compose the song that has become a cult among the general public, and that will be taken up by all French-speaking sailors. " Exactly on June 23, 1983 ", says Renaud, " Lolita was on my lap. The music came to me at the same time as the text: I relate my life on board in a humorous way, full of self-mockery. "
Antoine: a journey that has lasted 42 years
It was at the age of 30 that this Centrale graduate discovered sailing on a small dinghy. Already known to the general public thanks to the success of his hit "Les Élucubrations", he decided to discover the world by boat rather than by plane. Aboard OM, a solid steel schooner, he undertook his first solo transatlantic voyage in 1974. In 1989, OM was replaced by a catamaran named Banana Split, which allowed Antoine to alternate his life between Europe and Polynesia.
