One hundred years old Bernard Moitessier was born. Here’s why he became a legend

An anniversary celebrating the birth of an absolute myth of sailing and ocean sailing. On April 10, 1925, a full 100 years ago, Bernard Moitessier began his vagabond and rebellious sea life that has inspired generations of sailors.

April 10 of this 2025 marks an important date for all sailing and offshore sailing enthusiasts. It marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Bernard Moitessier, the wanderer of the oceans, the sailing adventurer par excellence, an icon of freedom who won the hearts of thousands of sailors around the world who followed his exploits and continue to do so today.

But why is Bernard Moitessier so beloved? Simple. Because through his life, the boats he sailed with, his extraordinary way of living and telling the sea Moitessier through resounding books marked the manifesto of a romantic, anarchic, bloody-minded and wonderfully rebellious sailing. His desire to sail free for the world, to be himself no matter what, to pursue an ideal of purity, to remain faithful only to the ocean, are elements that touch everyone’s soul and perhaps even more so in an age such as the one we live in that goes in the opposite direction: money, appearance, fashions, and the market dominate everything. In short, everything that Moitessier despised and from which he voluntarily, and at the cost of not a few sacrifices, distanced himself.

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Early sailor, persistent and dreamer

Born in Hanoi in 1925, Bernard Moitessier spent his childhood in Indochina where he learned to sail on the boats of local fishermen. When he was not sailing, he built small vessels himself that echoed the lines and sail rigging of those spartan but functional hulls. The call of the oceans became inescapable in 1947 when he abandoned his family and his job in his father’s business to wander the Gulf of Siam, the Java Sea and then the China Sea aboard a small junker.

Then in 1952 aboard Marie Therèse he tackled the Indian Ocean monsoons alone, but because of a charting error he ended up on the rocks in the Chagos Islands.He lived for a while in Mauritius where he built the Marie Therèse II, with which he sailed up the Atlantic to Trinidad, after a stop for some time in South Africa. He then continued in the Moitessier West Indies Sea until by a stroke of sleep he lost this boat as well.

“Joshua” and that sublime gesture of rebellion

In the grip of depression, Moitessier embarked as a laborer on a merchant ship, arriving for the first time in his parents’ homeland of France. There he began work on the Joshua, his mythical boat named in honor of the great navigator Joshua Slocum. It was a sturdy ketch rigged with two telegraph poles, with which he imparted lessons in deep-sea sailing in the Mediterranean Sea.

After marrying Françoise de Cazalet in 1961, he sailed with her again to Polynesia, on an extraordinary honeymoon in which the couple completed the Tahiti – Alicante crossing via Cape Horn, a total of 14,000 miles nonstop. A feat that inspired him to write the book Cape Horn to Sail.

While planning to complete a nonstop round-the-world race, passing through the three capes (Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin and Cape Horn), the first solo round-the-world race, the Golden Globe Race, was organized by The Sunday Times in 1968. An opportunity that Moitessier did not let slip away. But here he did something that amazed the world and gave rise to his legend. While leading the fleet, instead of returning winner to Europe, collecting the £5,000 prize and the glory, Moitessier decided to abandon the competition and continue sailing to the South Seas. That renunciation of success in the name of sailing purity is one of the most intense moments in sailing sport, a resounding rip-off, a sublime challenge, a stroke of genius that leaves the world stunned and turns Moitessier into an idol.

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The last years on an atoll in Polynesia.

In 1982, during a brief period when he had moved to California, Moitessier was caught in a sudden and severe cyclone while moored in roadstead off the Mexican coast and also lost the Joshua. It was a very hard blow for him and he took refuge in a remote atoll in the Tuamotu, French Polynesia, where he had a son, Stephan, with his new partner Ileana.

From here he continued to astonish the public with his pro-ecology and nuclear disarmament exploits aboard his last boat “Tamata.” He wrote his fourth and final book titled “Tamata and the Alliance” retracing and reflecting on the adventures of a lifetime and whose publishing success he was able to see. Suffering from prostate cancer, diagnosed in 1989, Bernard Moitessier died in Vanves in 1994 next to his partner Véronique. He is buried in the small town of Le Bono, in the Gulf of Morbihan, Brittany. A place where today, we are sure, there will be many who will remember him and give him the honor he deserves.

• Read also: That time we boarded the Joshua