Where does sailing come from?
"I think I was 13-14 years old, and some friends of my parents took me to Aber Wrac'h, in Brittany, to do a dinghy course, a 420, at UCPA. Although I'd been seasick for a long time, and still occasionally, the graft took hold immediately and definitively. A little later, I took a series of UCPA courses, culminating in a skipper's diploma, which, as an adult, enabled me to charter boats all over the world on a regular basis.
But how do you go from renting for 15 days a year to planning a round-the-world trip?
"First of all, it's the story of a revelation. That was nearly fifty years ago, but the memory is still very fresh in my mind. In 1972 or 73, when I was still a young teenager, I attended a lecture given by Gérard Janichon of the sailboat Damien. I was absolutely fascinated by his account. The images of Antarctica and the trip up the Amazon they made with Jérôme Poncet left a lasting impression on me. I remember coming out of the theater in Royan thinking, "One day I'll do that! After that, I devoured their books. The works of two other sailors, Bernard Moitessier and Ernest Shackleton, will also leave their mark on me. Antoine's will be the last layer of my dream, convincing me to set off. But the inspiration for my trip is definitely a mixture of 'Damien' and Moitessier."
As the years go by, at what point do you say to yourself: "I'm going"?
"In 2012, I was 54 years old at the time, and I told myself I couldn't put off my dream project indefinitely. In fact, it's going to happen in two stages. Firstly, in 2012, I seized the opportunity of a professional change, coupled with a two-month vacation, to make my first Atlantic crossing on an Alliage 44, a shipyard that has since disappeared. And already, I was organizing this first voyage with regular rotations of crew mates, all of whom had jobs and couldn't spare more than one or two consecutive weeks. It was on my return, in 2013, that I launched the Aquarius project, for a much longer voyage, but with the same idea of alternating stays on board with periods ashore. For me, "retirement" is a dirty word, and I can't see myself stopping working at all. But leaving a group with 6,000 employees in 2016 to become an independent consultant gives me a lot more freedom.
So I set off in search of the ideal boat, with my specifications in PowerPoint, which must have made the shipyards I consulted laugh. But I had a very good feeling with the Garcia shipyard team and architect Olivier Racoupeau. The genesis of this first Exploration 52, from design to launch, including all the construction phases, including the boiler making, carried out with impressive expertise, was an extremely interesting and enjoyable period."
The boat will be launched in early 2016, so what's on the agenda?
"The aim is to sail around the world as slowly and with as many crew members as possible (laughs)!
On a more serious note, the program is spread over eight years, four for the outward journey and four for the return, which we'll be starting in December 2020. The boat is currently in Tahiti, and over a hundred crew members have already sailed aboard! This is quite exceptional, as most of the boats we come across are couples, who usually sail in pairs all the time. In fact, the only small disappointment of this magnificent voyage is that we don't have very close relationships with other sailors, as our rhythm is really quite particular. But that's no big deal compared to what we experience along the way. What's more, we have a very clear way of working with our crew. Everything to do with the boat is for me, and everything to do with restaurants, shore excursions and so on is the responsibility of the crew. It's as if my wife Ségolène and I were guests on our own boat. Well, economically I'm not sure I'm a winner (laughs), but this transparency is very pleasant, and given the number of crew members who have been on board Aquarius since the start, most of whom are coming back or want to come back, it seems to suit everyone."
Tell us about the progress you've made since 2016?
"After a summer of familiarization in Brittany and a stopover in La Rochelle, where we were very proud to present Aquarius at the Grand Pavois, we headed south to carry out two humanitarian missions in Senegal, in the Sine Saloum region, for Voiles sans Frontières and Pompiers Entraide Internationale.
I'm still not quite sure how we managed to fit all the equipment we had to deliver into Aquarius, but we did! And it was really extraordinary to start our trip with these incredible moments, wet in the mangrove, repainting the dispensary, installing the equipment, redrawing the school plans...
In 2017 we crossed the Atlantic between Cape Verde and Barbados and enjoyed the West Indies. There were up to 11 of us on board to celebrate Christmas and January1, 2018! Even the saloon had been requisitioned as a bunk, but what memories these family moments were. Then we headed down to Cartagena, the San Blas, before passing Panama to reach the Galapagos. Several crews took turns during the three-month stopover, ensuring that the sea lions didn't take Aquarius for their home, or at least didn't venture further than the skirt, which they also found very comfortable. For the Pacific crossing to the Marquesas, I entrusted the boat to four friends, and for the past year we've been on our third trip to Polynesia.
I even indulged in a little folly last July. I was in Las Vegas for work, so there was "only" an 8-hour flight left to Papeete, so I treated myself to a week of solo sailing around Tahiti! "
Which route did you choose for the return journey then?
"As Moitessier advocated, we're going to take the "logical" route! That is, Aquarius will return to Europe via Cape Horn. But first I'm determined to take a trip to Antarctica, and I've set my sights on the Ukrainian research base of Vernadsky, located at 65°S on the Antarctic Peninsula opposite Cape Horn. It is said to be home to the southernmost bar in the world, although it only opens when someone shows up, and that's not every day! It's about two months at sea from Tahiti, in conditions that are bound to be bad at some point in these latitudes. But Aquarius has been designed for this, and I received invaluable advice from the great Jean-Luc Van den Heede at the Grand Large Yachting group's owners' evening in Paris in December 2019, so I'm confident. It's all about planning ahead for the installation of a makeshift rig, so as to anticipate a possible dismasting, a major damage that, if "VDH" is to be believed, can occur at any time and aboard any yacht, even the sturdiest, on the Southern Ocean. Suffice to say, I listened carefully!
We'll then head back to Ushuaïa (hopefully with our original rig!), where I'll leave Aquarius for a season. Wintering the boat and having it serviced remotely is never easy, and that will be the case there too, but it all comes together in the end... thanks Grand Large Services!
Sailing in the footsteps of Shackleton, Damien and Bernard Moitessier has to be earned anyway, and living my childhood dream, or rather the dream of a lifetime, is priceless!"
What's more, in tracing this route from Oceania to Antarctica, Hervé and Ségolène are partly borrowing the itinerary of Norman explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville. During his third round-the-world voyage (1837-1840), he anchored successively in Tahiti, Tonga, Samoa, New Zealand and Tasmania... and sought to reach the South Pole, no less, to honor the mission entrusted to him by Louis-Philippe! It wasn't until January 1840 that two of the ships on his expedition, the Astrolabe and the Zélée, reached a land that had been rendered almost inaccessible by the ice: it was in fact a continent, Antarctica, the mythical "Terra Australis Incognita". The same Southern Continent that the English captain James Cook had approached from very close quarters in 1773 without seeing it, reaching the insane latitude of 71°S, and which was in fact discovered in 1819 by William Smith, also an Englishman. No matter: Dumont d'Urville christened this desolate territory Terre Adélie, in tribute to his wife Adèle, and it is now a fully-fledged district of the Terres Australes et Antarctiques Françaises (TAAF), which occupies the base named... Dumont d'Urville, of course. And what's even more incredible is that this intrepid sailor was born in Condé-sur-Noireau, Normandy, in the same place as Hervé and Ségolène's boat, since it was in Condé that the Garcia brothers founded the shipyard of the same name in 1973, and that the companions of Garcia Yachts continue to build the shaped aluminium hulls of the Garcia Exploration models, including Aquarius.
"I find this coincidence incredible! "concludes Hervé. "It remains to be seen whether, like Dumont d'Urville, we'll complete three circumnavigations, but given the pace we're keeping up, that's much more uncertain..." (laughs).
The Garcia Exploration 52 Aquarius in figures
100: (estimate) the number of crew members who have sailed on Aquarius in five years.
_11: number of people on board in the West Indies for the 2017 holiday season.
30: in kilos, the weight of a metres Marlin caught off the coast of Colombia.
19 and 13: in days at sea, respectively the crossing times for the Pacific
(Galapagos - Marquesas) and the Atlantic (Cape Verde - Barbados).
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