Did you know that? The regulations of the Calanques Nature Park do not allow, for complex and not always obvious reasons to grasp, to sail there on board a rental sailboat led by a professional skipper. On the other hand, incursions into the "marine heart of the park" under the guidance of a professional skipper […]

It was in Port Zealand, in the inland waters of the Netherlands, that I picked up this Dehler 32, along with its new owner. The beginning of the route proved to be very exotic: narrow channels, country shores, two rocking bridges and two locks, the last shared with river trading boats next to which our […]

The containment was still in effect, when I carried out this ferry from Hyères (Var) to Port Leucate (Aude) of this Dufour 34 which had changed ownership – and therefore home port – on the eve of the health crisis due to Covid-19. This 140-mile format was ideally suited to a solo crossing: after 24 […]

And do you regularly check the status and validity of your security weaponry? Do you know all the equipment you have on board to deal with the emergency, do you check its good condition, its storage conditions, the expiry dates?

The new Special Offshore Regulations (RSOs) have just been published by World Sailing, the International Sailing Federation. Valid for the two years (2020-2021), they are translated into French and available for consultation and download on the website of the French Sailing Federation. These rules, consisting of a document of some sixty pages, are imposed on all […]

In mid-December 2019, Louis Duc’s Class 40 capsized off the Azores as it returned to Europe after the Transat Jacques Vabre. Lipped after fourteen hours of waiting on the deck of their boat submerged by the waves, Duke and his crew man got away thanks to the efficiency of the Portuguese rescuers, but also thanks […]

The February edition of the British magazine Seahorse has just been published, with my article on the architect David Raison, author of a spectacular double at the end of 2019 on the ocean racing front. While proto 650 No. 865, the name of baptism Maximum, won the Minitransat for the second consecutive edition, the first […]

Between two conveyances, on the return of a regatta or a cruise, I sometimes pick up the pen, for the British magazine Seahorse in particular. This time, it was to collaborate on a collective project led by Olivier Villepreux, with whom I found work habits and a complicity born at the time of Attitude Voile, […]

Three years earlier I had brought back to La Seyne sur Mer a J 111 that had just participated in the Middle Sea Race, this great Mediterranean classic whose route – more than 600 miles – makes the clockwise turn of a watch , Stromboli, the islands of Pantalleria and Lampedusa, before returning to Malta, […]

Once is not customary, it is as second that I embarked for this 1200 mile ferry aboard Lady of the Tropics, a 28-metre schooner on plan Auzépy Brenneur. I found this venerable lady of 30 years in the “great forms” of the Seyne-sur-Mer, the darses of the old shipyards dedicated to welcoming large yachts as […]