1993. Around the world in 80 days

Welcome to the special section “GdV 5th Years.” We are introducing you, day by day, An article from the archives of the Journal of Sailing, starting in 1975. A word of advice, get in the habit of starting your day with the most exciting sailing stories-it will be like being on a boat even if you are ashore.

Around the world in 80 days

Taken from the 1993 Journal of Sailing, Year 19, No. 5, June, p. 38/43.

As anticipated by Jules Verne more than a century earlier, Frenchman Loick Peyron entered history by circumnavigating the Globe in 80 days. Become a hero like Columbus, Magellan, Vasco de Gama. He wins the trophy named, indeed, Verne and pockets a million dollars.

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Great Verne, great Peyron. The former for having imagined exactly, more than a century ago, the physiological limit of circumnavigating the world; the latter for having accomplished it in less than 80 days. Sailing has a new hero, French of course.

Still this much. He signaled Bruno Peyron to his daughter Alessandra, seven, almost joining thumb and forefinger of his right hand. On the shore of the canal port of Poliguen, one of the two ends of the Gulf of La Baule, the more sheltered one, he was entering late afternoon, in tow of a tugboat called the Cote d’Amoure, the catamaran Commodore. Clearly, the first thought of her skipper, Bruno Peyron, was for his daughter, the same one who in the morning, on live television, in the course of a radio link with her father had hidden under the table in search of a minimum of privacy and justifiably indifferent to the rules of show business.

It was moving to see the epilogue of the Around the World in 80 Days There were thousands of people there, awed by the record (79 days, 12 hours, 15 minutes, and 56 seconds), the challenge to Jules Verne’s myth, and also by the dynamics of the crossing itself, made up of ice collisions, whale encounters, and even a risk of shipwreck at Cape Horn, where the wind whistled over 80 knots. Those thousands of people had been thunderstruck by this incredible interweaving of literature, fantasy activity, and reality. It seemed far-fetched that Verne, 130 years earlier, had practically guessed the actual time limit needed to complete the round-the-world voyage, but it happened.

Bruno Peyron did it and became a hero. Yes, a hero in earnest, to the point that a morning newspaper placed his picture next to portraits of Vasco de Gama, Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus and Jacques Cartier (but what watches, he is the discoverer of Canada). It will be history that will define the greatness of navigator Peyron, born in 1954, a Breton – and where else – son of a longtime captain and with 27 Atlantic crossings on his shoulders. Today his feat appears objectively exhilarating. That is why his enthusiasm upon arrival is understandable, when he finally set foot on land and launched himself, right before our eyes, into a very long embrace with his daughter, which ended in an ocean of tears. And to think they described him as tough, friendless, far from the clan that counts in French sailing, that of Tabarly and his protégés.

He did not look tough that night Peyron, he looked like Dustin Hoffman, charming, happy, as one can be after taming the ocean. Because his victory in the Julius Verne Trophy-and the million dollars that come with it-is not the result of chance or fate, but of will and organization. With Commodore had started the cat Enza led by the former skipper of Steinlager Peter Blake along with Robin Knox Johnston, a week earlier the trimaran Charal, the one sponsored by Raul Gardini, which had Olivier de Kersuason at the tiller. Charal, which in any case was racing outside the rules of the trophy by not even respecting the start line (which was then the same as the finish line, between the English Cape Lizard and the French island of Ouessant) as well as assuming some expressly forbidden technical stops, soon left the scene, before rounding Buona Speranza. Hull problems, probably delaminated, although the official version speaks of a close encounter with drifting icebergs.

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A few days after the 43-meter monohull Tag-Heuer, built by Tencara and launched with pomp and circumstance in Venice last Feb. 6 for Titouan Lamazou with the same goal of round-the-world sailing within 80 days, suffered serious hull failure off Brindisi. Again structural problems, carbon constructions of this size evidently requiring further experimentation. Then it was the turn of the retirement of Enza, bent by yet another technical problem. In short, a carnage that sweeps everything and everyone, almost a supernatural signal that stands to indicate that the undertaking is “tough” and close to the limit, the boundary that repels man when he dares too much. Peyron has dared, has traveled along that boundary on more than one occasion, but he has done well. Because he is good, he got lucky, because his equipment held up, and his crew was very strong: 48-year-old Olivier Despaigne, 30-year-old Jacques Vincent, 34-year-old Cam Lewis, 35-year-old Marc Vallin.

Commodore, 28 meters long overall and 13 and 60 meters wide with 31 meters of mast, displaces 10 tons when fully loaded and is none other than the old Jet Service V built in 1987 and with which Serge Madec set the record in 1990 on the Atlantic crossing from West to East in 6 days, 13 hours and 3 minutes. The cat, designed by Gilles Ollier and built by Multiplast, demonstrated exceptional endurance during the three critical moments of the circumnavigation of the globe, which began on Jan. 31. On Feb. 28, two waves opened a 40-centimeter gap in the port hull, below the waterline. On March 24, a few dozen miles from Cape Hom, a depression of impressive violence sweeps over the Commodore. On board, the worst is feared and preparations are made to abandon the hull, which drifts to the cape toward the Chilean coast. For 12 hours the wind remains above 75 knots, with numerous points above 80. Then it slowly subsides and Peyron is able to get back on the right course, entering the Atlantic around 8 p.m. on March 25 with three hands of reefing to the mainsail. II April 16 Commodore is on her seventy-fifth day of sailing and the record seems firmly within her grasp, but spoiling the now quiet sailing are two whales, when even the insidiousness of equatorial calms is now behind the stern.

The collision with the whales

Stories of collisions between cetaceans and sailboats in the vastness of the ocean always leave us earthlings who see them as likely as a simultaneous meeting at the center of the earth between two spelunkers who left one from Italy and the other from California. Yet they have happened and continue to happen. as on Commodore, where as many as two whales arrived at the same time that day to sharply shear off the left hull drift and open a breach nearly ten feet long. In these cases everyone is concerned about the boat and no one is concerned about the animals. All we know about them is that they disappeared with a flick of their fins, although we imagine what they thought, “what the heck are these guys doing here, why don’t they stay at home, we don’t go snooping around in their towns.”

Commodore was wounded, but not yet to be shot down. Fortunately the breach was between two watertight bulkheads that contained its extension, it was just a matter of hoping for the wind from the left to push the right one into the water and lift the injured one. So, albeit with some fretting, it was and the record rightly came. Perfectly aware of all this were the thousands of people who had gathered in La Baule to greet Peyron and his crew. Cam Lewis was wrapped in an American flag and shouting “Vive la France” evidently drunk, the spring air was warm, and congratulations, interviews, photos, and autographs rained down torrentially. Later, in a large auditorium in the town, another crowd bath and a chance for all to hear their voices, not yet polluted by the custom of earthly relations, and therefore still charged with poetry.

Listen to the skipper: “No, I don’t think I’m going to write a book about this adventure, it seems to me that there is already a rather successful one with the same title, and I certainly don’t want to compete with Julius Verne. When did I know we could do it? Soon enough, after not even a week of sailing I had an image that ended up accompanying me with its force throughout the journey. There was a moon, it was night, and everything was going smoothly. At shift change time I saw for a moment the whole crew together. It is hard to explain, but in that moment I knew that we plowed a good group, that we had come a long way, I felt good and part of them. It’s a feeling that has served me well in crucial moments, but I have to say that you get used to anything, even stable 50 knots. I happened to go outside, looking around, reading the anemometer, seeing the pouring rain, the mainsail with three hands of reefing, approaching my mate at the helm to relieve him and asking: how is it going? The answer was always the same: great.” .

This is how Peyron set a new record for the nonstop circumnavigation of the globe, in less than 80 days, better than Verne’s fantasy.

Luca Bontempelli

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