The end of a mythical and talked-about boat. Farewell to the former Club Mediterranee
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This burning boat, pictured just before it sank (which occurred in Malaysia’s Pulau Singa Bay last February), has been one of the most talked-about myths in sailing history. It is in fact the four-masted 75-meter (x 9.58 m beam) Enigma (ex-Phocea), actually passed into history under her previous name Club Méditerranée . The “mastodon” with which Alain Colas took part, to general amazement, in the 1976 Ostar. A sad end for a mythical boat whose soul, as we tell you below, had long since been “distorted.”
The history of Club Méditerranée
Today they would call him a “braggart.” At the 1976 Ostar, everyone was stunned when Alain Colas showed up with Club Méditerranée: that is, 75-meter boat (the largest ever to participate in an ocean race), 1000 square meters of sails, 280 tons of weight and four masts. The project was by Michel Bigoin.
Much ado about nothing: Colas will finish fifth (second in actual, but penalized 58 hours by the jury because in Newfoundland, where he had stopped for an emergency stopover, he was helped by a local crew to hoist the sails): 7 hours and 28 minutes behind winner Tabarly on the Pen Duick VI, “only” 22.25 meters long.
After the regatta, Club Mediterranée was chosen to represent France during the parade on the Hudson River to mark the bicentennial since the birth of the United States. Back in France, Colas use the “Grand Bateau” in the “Welcome on Board” operation: he moored the boat at major ports in the Atlantic and Canary Islands, inviting visitors aboard free of charge in the morning and organizing fishing trips and paid lectures in the afternoon.
The Tapie era
In 1978 Colas disappeared in the waves at the Route du Rhum; his wife inherited his boats. Club Mediterranee, purchased by businessman Bernard Tapie in 1982, was renamed Phocea and refitted at a cost of 10 million euros. In 1988 Tapie made the record Atlantic monohull crossing by boat. Following the bankruptcy of Tapie’s companies, In 1996, the Phocea was seized by liquidators and sold in 1997 for 6 million euros, a price lower than the boat’s real value, to Mouna Ayoub, former wife of billionaire Nasser Al-Rashid.
From performance boat to luxury superyacht
Insensitive to the sporting spirit that drove Bernard Tapie, Mouna Ayoub replaced the lightweight materials used in the latter’s modifications with heavier materials from the luxury nautical tradition. The size of masts and sails was also reduced to reduce the heeling angle of the sailboat. Finally, a plan was added for more space: total expenditure, 17 million. It was no longer the old Club Mediterranee. It weighed 60% more and had 35% less sail area. The exceptional boat turned into a “common” megayacht.
In 2010, Mouna Ayoub resold the yacht for about 10 million to Xavier Niel and brothers Steve and Jean-Emile Rosenblum, founders of the website Pixmania. The yacht was registered in Luxembourg, owned by a Maltese company, Phocea Limited. This in turn was 50 percent owned by holdong NJJ Capital (a French company controlled by Xavier Niel) and holdong Dotcorp Finance (a company under Luxembourg law owned by Rosenblum brothers). Phocea was also talked about relative to the tax evasion scandals brought to light by the disclosure of the so-called Malta Files.
On February 18, 2021, a fire broke out in the boat’s aft rooms while the boat was at anchor in Malaysia’s Langkawi archipelago. The seven crew members on board were rescued by firefighters, but the next day the Enigma, now a distant relative of what had once been the Club Mediterranee, sank.
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