Fiberglass? No thanks! Here is the microboat that amazes Paris
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One of the stars of the Paris Boat Show is a small boat built entirely of jute fiber, which has sailed thousands of miles in total energy and power autonomy, under the command of a 30-year-old Frenchman. What a great story!
At the Paris Boat Show, hidden among the “normal” boats, we found an exceptional boat (and story). At booth M 69 you will marvel as you admire a small boat, Gold of Bengal, which sailed in seven months across the Bay of Bengal, from Bangladesh to Malaysia, via the Nicobar and Andaman Islands.
JUTA ONLY!
But that is not what will surprise you; the boat is constructed entirely of Jute fiber, without in ounce of fiberglass. On board during navigation was a tropical greenhouse, two chickens, and a hand-held watermaker. The protagonist of this beautiful adventure, who built the boat himself and sailed a good part of the way solo, is a 30-year-old Frenchman, Corentin de Chatelperron, who wanted to prove with this small venture of his that it is possible, even today, to live completely independently at sea, without spending a penny and without using anything that is not produced from natural raw materials, adapted for nautical use with only manual labor.
Watch the video of Gold of Bengal
DE CHATELPERRON’S FIXATION
Corentin de Chatelperron is on his second adventure with a jute boat; in 2009 he had built Tara Tari (40 percent jute fiber and 60 percent fiberglass) to reach France from Bangladesh. The young Frenchman had traveled to Bangadesh, after earning an engineering degree, to work at a shipyard building fiberglass boats. Fascinated by the boat-building methods of poor local fishermen who used materials recovered from nature, he decided to move away from fiberglass. Now he tells his story at the Paris show, the temple of fiberglass.
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