Bernard Moitessier - The long way

by Bernard Moitessier

Translated by
William Rodarmor

Other Bernard Moitessier books
available from Sheridan House:

Cape Horn: The Logical Route
Sailing to the Reefs
A Sea Vagabonds World
Tamata and the Alliance

This edition published 1995 by
Sheridan House, Inc.
145 Palisade Street
Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522
www.sheridanhouse.com

Reprinted 1996, 1998, 2000, 2003

La Longue Route 1971, 1986 by Editions Arthaud
Translation Copyright 1973 by William Rodarmor

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of Sheridan House.

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 13: 978-0-924486-84-5 (alk.paper)

Solid line: first circumnavigation. Dotted line: second passage across the Indian and Pacific Oceans. In total the voyage was one and a half times around the world.

Thursday August 22, Lock and I pop our heads out of the hatches at the same time... we had just listened to the weather report.

Did you hear? Shall we clear out?

And how! Tomorrow is a Friday!

Our boats lie at anchor in Plymouth harbour and the BBC forecasts favourable winds today and tomorrow, but also fog. Too bad about the fog: it will have to be today. Sailors do not like to leave on Friday, even if they are not superstitious, and waiting for Saturday is out of the question; the wind would have time to shift back to the west. We may be crazy to want to fell the three capes at a single blow, but we are not stupid enough to deliberately risk getting blackjacked by the approach of another low in the Bay of Biscay. The good Lord had given us the green light, it is not a Friday, lets clear off! Bill King still has a few little things to take care of. He will leave day after tomorrow, on Saturday. Hmm... could it be that Bill King doesnt like Friday either? As for Nigel, he cannot leave before the first of September, because of his job in the Royal Navy.

From then on, everything went very fast. I remember Franoises small face struggling vainly to keep the tears back. Franoise is my wife. I was upset to see her cry. Listen, well be seeing each other again soon! After all, what is eight or nine months in a lifetime? Dont give me the blues at a time like this! I felt such a need to rediscover the wind of the high sea, nothing else counted at that moment, neither earth nor men. All Joshua and I wanted was to be left alone with ourselves. Any other thing did not exist, had never existed. You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time toward the open sea. It goes, thats all, and it is as simple as a ray of sunshine, as normal as the blue of the sky.

All that canvas up in the air! I will heave everything taut when we first come about beyond the corner of the breakwater. The sheet winches creak, the water murmurs on the bottom as Joshua gathers way and begins to come alive... People who do not know that a sailboat is a living creature will never understand anything about boats and the sea.

Franoise had stopped crying. She was fascinated by the power and harmony of the long red hull trimmed with black, its great white wings bellied by the wind, full of one mans dreams and the thoughts of many others. She shouted to me, You cant imagine how lovely she looks; take care of her, she will pay you back! But she was crying again when the launch turned back after the breakwater, leaving me alone with my boat and the horizon.

Suddenly, I thought very hard of my children. We had often talked about the voyage. Had I been able to make them understand, in those days when technical preparations called for all my mental and physical resources? I think they felt the essential, and will know enough to obey their own inner voices.

The wake stretches on and on, white and dense with life by day. luminous by night, like long tresses of dreams and stars. Water runs along the hull and rumbles or sings or rustles, depending on the wind, depending on the sky, depending on whether the sun was setting red or grey. For many days it has been red, and the wind hums in the rigging, makes a halyard tap against the mast at times, passes over the sails like a caress and goes on its way to the west, toward Madeira, as Joshua rushes to the south in the trade wind at 7 knots.

Wind, sea, boat and sails, a compact, diffuse whole, without beginning or end, a part and all of the universe... my own universe, truly mine.

I watch the sun set and inhale the breath of the open sea, I feel my being blossoming and my joy soars so high that nothing can disturb it. The other questions, the ones that used to bother me at times, do not weigh anything before the immensity of a wake so close to the sky and filled with the wind of the sea.

Before leaving Toulon for Plymouth, I had been incensed at the Sunday Times, which had decided to organize a solo non-stop race around the world, with two prizes: a golden globe for the first to finish, and 5000 sterling for the fastest voyage. There was no need to be officially entered, and the rules were simple: all you had to do was to leave from any English port between June 1 and October 31, then return to it after rounding the three capes of Good Hope, Leeuwin and the Horn.

The idea came to the Sunday Times after they heard that Bill King and Joshua were preparing for the long way. My old pal Lock Fougeron was also readying for the trip; we had exchanged confidences at Toulon. We talked rigging, equipment, stores, useless weight, encumbering but essential weight, sails light and easy to handle, or heavier and more solid but harder to furl in a real blow, collecting rainwater, foul weather, cold, loneliness, seasons, human endurance... only things of the sea. After the Sunday Times announcement we decided to sail our boats to Plymouth, hoping to be able to carry off one or even both of the prizes, the good Lord willing, without risking our freedom, since the rules did not specify that we had to say Thank you. From a strictly technical standpoint the run to Plymouth would also be an excellent trial before the main event, to shake out the bugs; once there, to get everything really shipshape to the least detail.

The wind is holding, Joshua is moving very fast, I feel passing through my whole being that breath of the high seas that once felt is never forgotten. What peace, here in the open sea! And it seems ages ago that I stopped resenting the staff of the Sunday Times. In fact my rancour dissipated at Plymouth during our first meeting with the chaps who work on the paper. Robert, the head of the team, would have liked me to ship a big transmitter with batteries and generator. They offered it gratis, to Lock as well, so we could send them two weekly messages. The big cumbersome contraptions were not welcome. Our peace of mind, and thereby our safety, was more important, so we preferred not to accept them. Robert understood the meaning of our trip, though, and we were friends. Steve, his fellow from the Press Service, loaded both of us with film, as well as watertight Nikonos cameras. He told us, We are giving you all this, we ask nothing in exchange. And Bob, the