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Bernard Moitessier (10 April 1925 Hanoi, Vietnam – 16 June 1994 near Paris, France) was a renowned French yachtsman and author of books about his voyages and sailing.
In 1968, Moitessier participated in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a race to become the first sailor to circumnavigate the earth alone and non-stop. Although Moitessier stood a very good chance of winning, he abandoned his effort seven months into the race, and continued on to Polynesia rather than returning to England. The decision to abandon while in the lead is instructive of Moitessier's character - although driven and competitive, he passed up a chance at instant fame and a record, and sailed on for three more months. Sir Robin Knox-Johnston went on to both win the race and become the first man to circumnavigate the globe alone without stopping. After his 37,000-mile (60,000 kilometre) voyage, Moitessier wrote The Long Way, a classic sailing narrative.
For the 1968 race, Moitessier sailed a 12 metre steel-hulled ketch, the Joshua. He had the vessel built in 1961, and named it after Joshua Slocum, the first sailor to circumnavigate the globe alone (over a three year period with numerous stops).
Moitessier circumnavigated the world and sailed almost two-thirds of the way round a second time, all non-stop and mostly in the roaring forties. Despite heavy weather and a couple of severe knockdowns, he contemplated rounding the Horn again. However, he decided that he and Joshua had had enough and sailed to Tahiti, where he and his wife had set out for Alicante. He thus completed his second personal circumnavigation of the world (including the previous voyage with his wife) on 21 June 1969. He then started work on his book.
It is impossible to say whether Moitessier would have won if he had completed the race, as he would have been sailing in different weather conditions than Knox-Johnston; based on his time from the start to Cape Horn being about 77% of that of Knox-Johnston, it would have been an extremely close race. His book, The Long Way, tells the story of his voyage as a spiritual journey as much as a sailing adventure and is still regarded as a classic of sailing literature. Joshua was beached, along with many other yachts, by a famous hurricane at Cabo San Lucas in 1982.
Moitessier wrote several books about his voyages and the sea, and was an environmental activist against nuclear weapons in the South Pacific. He died of cancer in 1994.
Partial list of works
- Un Vagabond des mers du sud (1960)
- Cap Horne à la voile: 14216 milles sans escale (Cape Horn: The Logical Route: 14,216 Miles Without Port of Call, 1967)
- Longue route ; seul entre mers et ciels (The Long Way, 1971)
- Tamata et l'alliance (Tamata and the Alliance, 1993)
Quotes
"You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time toward the open sea. It goes, that's all."
"I am a citizen of the most beautiful nation on earth. A nation whose laws are harsh yet simple, a nation that never cheats, which is immense and without borders, where life is lived in the present. In this limitless nation, this nation of wind, light, and peace, there is no other ruler besides the sea."
"My real log is written in the sea and sky; the sails talking with the rain and the stars amid the sounds of the sea, the silences full of secret things between my boat and me, like the times I spent as a child listening to the forest talk." (from "The Long Way")