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"A h that's a Écume de Mer! From Mallard shipyards! "says a yachtsman as he passes our boat. I'm always amazed that this sailboat is still so popular: 55 years after her appearance, she's recognized, saluted and even celebrated on a Facebook page "Écume de Mer Mallard - World", whose 1,400 French, English and even Spanish members share their passion for the 1,385 examples of this sailboat, which had her moment of glory when she was selected to be the first one-design boat in the Tour de France à la voile in 1978. " Yes, it's a Écume de Mer, and it's been given to us! "I always say with pride, even though we had nothing to do with it, we were just very lucky.
A first Écume de Mer to try
Jean and I met at Les Glénans in 2012, and 3 years after we met in Paimpol, we settled on the Crozon peninsula to live on love and salt water and grow our children in the fresh air. We dream of taking them for boat rides. When our eldest son Amaury was born in 2015, we bought an Écume de Mer from a friend for ?2,500. Here we are, the happy and naive owners of "Sir Jonathan Livingstone", which we rename "Jojo".
The "false" bargain
We thought we had a good deal, but the boat needs work, which between our children's diapers and our fast-paced professional lives, we never find the time to do. After a few outings to keep in shape, "Jojo" ran aground in a friend's garden in the center of Crozon.
7 years, two children and a house later, my husband Jean found the energy and time to refit "Jojo". In 2022, during a drunken evening celebrating a friend's EVG, he spoke of his plan to refit her and finally introduce our exhausting offspring to the joys of sailing, which we hope a light breeze and a little sea will be enough to lull to sleep for many hours!
Undressing Peter to dress Paul
It just so happens that Baptiste, a friend of the groom-to-be and owner of a shipyard on the Rance, has a not-too-disgusting "Écume de Mer" in his stock of boats to deconstruct, ready to be scrapped. Baptiste proposes to Jean to undress Peter to dress Paul. Mass is said, and Jean leaves a few days later for Minihic-sur-Rance to empty and strip the boat before burial.
Not so rotten
Examining the beast, Jean notices that its eye is still bright and its coat shiny. Sleeping on his cradle, "Sea sea", the Écume de Mer he is about to skin, is not ready for burial and is in much better condition than "Jojo".
He sends me a few photos with his low-cost smartphone, saying he wants to ask the owner of "Sea Sea" to give it to him instead of throwing it into the clutches of an incinerator. I can feel his heart beating through the 4G, and despite the mediocre quality of the images, there's no denying that "Sea Sea" is much prettier than "Jojo", will take a thousand times less time to repair, and will get us on the water sooner!
A quick change of hands
Jean asks Baptiste for permission to contact the owner and ask for Sea Sea's hand in marriage. Permission granted. Jean calls "Sea Sea's" owner to ask permission to adopt "Sea Sea", permission granted. The papers are drawn up, the transfer is finalized, and Jean and Yannick spend 2 weeks in the yard preparing our second Écume de Mer to head for the peninsula and her new home port of Morgat.
Yannick is a 60-year-old captain I met in Les Glénans. He's the crew member for all the crazy projects: he's the happy, naive owner of a 20-meter schooner that was given to him for a symbolic ?1 15 years ago, and which hasn't left land since. So he's keen for us to finally touch the sea.
Site and delivery
After 2 weeks of careening, mechanical checks, fitting out and preparing the boat for the long crossing from the English Channel to the Iroise, little Yannick and big Jean set off for 3 days of sailing together, without autopilot. At home, I have the best excuse in the world to explain their father's absence to our children: " Dad prepares and brings back a boat we gave him. Isn't life great? "And finally, on one of the last hot days in June, our children run excitedly onto the pontoon to welcome "Sea Sea" and its precious crew.
Everything came together incredibly quickly, and we'll always be grateful to our friend for getting married, because without this EVG, none of this would have happened. We'll also always thank Baptiste, the owner of the Mihinic-sur-Rance boatyard, without whom none of this would have been possible, and finally we're entirely grateful to the owner of the boat who agreed to give it to us.
One Écume de Mer yes, but not 2!
We can't keep these 2 Écumes de Mer, so "Jojo" had to leave us. We kept his engine to replace the parts on "Sea Sea"'s engine, should they run out, as well as a few items of rigging and fittings, and bade him farewell before his last crossing to the "water beyond", assured, at the time in June 2022, by the Recycleurs Bretons.
