No doubt some people would benefit from not taking up the pen to recount their biography. Or at least to do so with much more humility. In the latter respect, Alain Thébault is clearly not the best. In the 400 pages that make up "Alain Thébault, les sillages de l'audace", the sailor never questions himself, never hesitating to denigrate his collaborators to justify his failures.
The long history of l'Hydroptère
And it's a shame not to acknowledge it. After all, this ambitious young man pulled off the feat of imagining a flying boat, l'Hydroptère, and carrying the project forward from 1984 for over 20 years. In the face of breakages and financial setbacks, he always stood firm, swearing, with good reason, that flying with foils was the solution to sailing fast.
Boats fly today thanks to Alain Thébault
But alas, some of the reading passages are really too self-centered. In the course of the book, he spins out his little vendettas. When he talks about Olivier de Kersauson, for example, " But Kersauson is Cruising at an average speed of 20 knots ". Or " Les Ultimes Franco-français - a name as pretentious as it is ludicrous - is built on the model I imagined "He also tells the story of how, thanks to his interventions, the America's Cup competitors managed to get their boats to fly.
The sad end of l'Hydroptère
After a catastrophic crossing between California and Hawaii, where the hydrofoil proved incapable of sailing outside wind angles of between 130° and 150°, Alain Thébault simply abandoned the boat. And when Gabriel Terrasse, with the help of an American, bought the boat at auction, the l'Hydroptère skipper referred to him without mentioning him as one of his former trainees" who barely knows how to moor a boat "and who " doesn't have what it takes to drive this car ".
Lawsuits and debts
So much for the Hydroptère part. The rest, with the many entrepreneurial attempts that have often ended in failure, is given little prominence in these pages.
If the speech wasn't just pompous
Lovers of l'Hydroptère and its history may find something in this book to satisfy them. The author's lyricism and total lack of self-questioning will have to be overcome. The trail of audacity is, alas, too much overshadowed by the character's ego.
Alain Thébault The wake of audacity
- Solar Edition
- 14 x 22.5 cm
- 432 pages
- 21,90 ?
