TO CROSS AN OCEAN
People say that before you die, you should have written a book, planted a tree and raised a kid…I would add crossing an ocean. I did that on February 1st 2018. It was the first one for Nael and Aurélien. I had already done it in February 2012 with my windsurf board, a story I wrote about in my book “Avec du coeur, tout est possible” (With heart, everything is possible). But it was my first time going through the “Doldrums” and crossing the equator, an important experience for a sailor. When you leave the shore for this “no man’s land of sea” it’s not without anxiety. I had heard a lot of things about these huge spaces with no wind but lots of violent lightning storms. Thanks to our godfather, Christian Dumard, our navigation guru/angel, we crossed this intertropical zone without too much problem, just 15 hours of motoring and one violent storm to cross. The other storms were less strong. Ten days after we had left the small island of Brava, we reached Fernando de Noronha’s coast, a real treasure of the Brazilian landscape. As we anchored, surrounded by dozens of dolphins, we took stock of what we had accomplished through our passion for travelling by sea. Our adventure is still going strong with our greatest joy, our baby, whose first Christmas was at sea and first birthday in Brazil. Next stop is French Guyana with its muddy waters and Caimans, something we plan to avoid with our inflatables!