In the same place, in 1977, a young Canadian was mooring his little yellow trimaran on the quays of the corsair city. Nobody knew this dry and silent man. And yet he was to become a legend with a fantastic finish, overtaking Michel Malinovsky's monohull just before the finish line. That day, the sailor Mike Birch, but also the transatlantic race and the multihulls entered the legend.
The sailor continued his route in ocean racing before landing on land in 2002. With one foot in Canada and the other in Southern Brittany, the man never stayed away from the sea. He died in his home in Brec'h in Morbihan at the age of 90.
This sailor who has had a thousand lives, as he liked to say, has touched on everything. It was only later that he discovered the sea and sailing. Self-taught, training by doing convoying, he will revolutionize ocean racing by focusing on the multihull from the beginning. As Loïc Peyron explains, Mike Birch has never capsized in a multihull, always sailing with incredible flexibility, like a cat.
