Guirec Soudée - A Sailor, a Chicken, an Incredible Voyage: The Seafaring Adventures of Guirec and Monique

First published in English by Greystone Books in 2021 Originally published in French as Le Monde selon Guirec et Monique: Un marin, une poule, un incroyable voyage, copyright 2019 by Flammarion, Paris English translation copyright 2021 by David Warriner

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Greystone Books Ltd.

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Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

ISBN 978-1-77164-704-5 (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-77164-705-2 (epub)

Copy editing by James Penco Proofreading by Alison Strobel Jacket and text design by Fiona Siu Jacket and interior photographs by Guirec Soude, except where credited otherwise Map by Fiona Siu

Greystone Books gratefully acknowledges the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples on whose land our office is located.

Greystone Books thanks the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, and the Government of Canada for supporting our publishing activities.

For my father, Stany, and Yvinec, his island paradise.
See, Dad, I took your advice: he who dares, wins!

LOOK, MONIQUE, THATS where we are. Vancouver Island, its called. Pretty, isnt it?

And all the way up there? Thats Greenland! Remember Disko Bay? What a blast we had up there, just the two of us. For sure, we froze our feathers off, but plenty of things up there made us work up a sweat, didnt they? Now, Momo, look at my finger. See where Im pointing? There. See all that blue? Thats the Pacific Ocean. And all those little dots in the middle of the blue? Those are islands.

Stop clucking, Momo. Listen to me. So this place here, thats Polynesia. There they make garlands out of flowers, and everything smells of vanilla and coconut. Ah, its so, so sweet. Thats where were going. Its going to be a long journey, Monique. A very long journey. But at the end, when we get there, there will be soft, white-sandy beaches and clear, turquoise-blue water, just like on Yvinec. Thats my little island in France. Ill take you there one day. Polynesias going to feel so nice after all that ice. Youll see; its a bit like the Canary Islands, where you come from. In this paradise, youll be able to catch all the fish you like. And well go windsurfing, stand-up paddleboarding, and even kitesurfing! No, we wont jump too high, I promise. So what do you say?

WE DIDNT END up going to paradise, Momo. Not that one, anyway. They wouldnt have us there. Well, they said they didnt want you there. And I wont go anywhere without you.

But its okay; well find our own paradise.

Monique eats from her new bol breton

DECEMBER 2012

At last, I had my boat.

I couldnt find one locally in Brittany, so I had to go all the way down to the south of Franceto Martigues, a picturesque little port town just outside of Marseille. Whod have thought that a young guy like me, Guirec, from the little village of Plougrescant, on the northern coast of Brittany, would end up scoring a sailboat from a glitzy marina on the Mediterranean?

The owners made it clear on the phone: Youre coming a long way, so dont come for nothing. Its forty thousand euros. Were not letting it go for any less.

Okay, I said, and off I went.

I didnt have the forty thousand. Scrimping together all my savings, plus what Id earned on my working holiday in Australia, I had thirty-one thousand. But I wanted that boat.

I had spent ages combing all the classified ads of Brittany and scouring all the local marinas for boats for sale, to no avail. I had seen dozens of sailboats, but nothing was quite what I was looking foror within my budget. I needed a boat that could skim across the ocean waves. Down south, Lungta was waiting for me. Her name was a good omen. She was named after the Tibetan wind horse, a symbol of good fortune found on traditional prayer flags.

The first time I saw her, Lungta was out of the water on her cradle, shining bright under the brilliant blue skies of Provence. I knew this was the boat for me as soon as I laid eyes on her. She was perfect. Just over thirty feet long, she was a decent size and seemed to be in pretty good shape. Solid enough too, and just as tidy on the inside as she was on the outsidethough I have to admit I wasnt a huge fan of the orange-colored hull. But that was nothing a coat or two of fresh paint couldnt fix.

I said seemed to be in good shape because the truth was that I knew nothing at all about cruiser yachts. Id never set foot on an oceangoing vessel before, and as soon as we began discussing the technical details, I was completely out of my depth. I just smiled and nodded and pretended I knew what I was talking about. One of the two young owners, Damien, soon put me at ease. As I explained what I was planning to dosail solo across the Atlantic and get close to the ice around the North PoleI could see him getting all starry-eyed.

I mean, how could he not take me seriously? I had traveled the length of France to come and see this boat. Like a true seafarer, I inspected the hull, pointed out a fault or two, pretended Id found a weak spot here and there. I listened to the sound of the engine, made sure it was clean, checked for play in the rudder, gave the mast a shake, unfurled the sails, and tested the fittings.

To do what I set out to achieve, I explained, I would have to fix up a lot of things, replace some parts, have the hull inspected for durability, you name it. The longer the conversation went on, the more I bartered. In the end, I negotiated well: they let her go for twenty-nine thousand. At last, I was the owner of a great boat!

A few weeks later, I came back down to Martigues to put the boat in the water. I enlisted three friends to come and help: my buddy Romain and two seasoned sailors, Kiki and tienne. I was no stranger to being on the water, but Id always been more of a windsurfer than a sailor. At the helm of a sailboat, I was clueless. There was no way I could have sailed this boat back to Brittany without their help.