I don't remember days of sadness in Brest. It's almost an island. The sea enters the narrows, the harbor, it is everywhere. In case we forget, the sea wind comes to pick you up from the depths of the city streets. The people of Brest are very pleasant. There is something about themselves, a reserve. Contact with them can be very friendly, warm, but always very decorous. People don’t pat you on the back and say “are you okay Bébert?” “. I like this Breton restraint, which is a form of politeness.
At what age did you first get on a boat?
It must have been between 1948 and 1950, in Locquirec (29), on a boat called Gwalarn. I was 4-5 years old. We go fishing as far as Locquémeau (22). As I am small, I have the smell of fish cut on the bench to bait the line close to my nose. I remember this first trip to the sea as dazzling. Almost sixty years later, I took Géronimo to the port of Locquirec. I wanted to come full circle with my first navigation.
You were a boarder at the school, from 13 to 19 years old. Suffice to say that you have had time to dream of the sea!
When I had to leave the seaside to return to my boarding school – I did eleven! – it was, each time, a wrench. I read to escape. As soon as I was able to cast off, I read a lot less. My relationship with the sea is not intellectual.
Between your first outing, as a child, in Locquirec, and your military service in the navy, on the schooner Pen Duick III, twenty years later, how was young Kersauson formed?
I was a sailor scout. From the age of 15, I started working on boats: I painted them, maintained them.
What does “having a sense of the sea” mean? Is it innate?
When you like something, you're good at it.
You talk about your misanthropy in your book. And, in particular, the dream you sometimes have: you wake up alone on Earth. Would you support yourself?
Quite ! I would like that when I open my windows in the morning, there is not a human being within a radius of at least 200 kilometers.
“It’s really good to be alone,” you say: “living together” isn’t really your thing, is it?
People have never been, for me, a need but often a pleasure. I am only available for what I want to do.
The years spent with Tabarly were magical. He was fourteen years older than me. I was his sailor then his second in command. Watching him decide, I learned to decide.
We understand, reading you, that you preferred solo races. However, who did you enjoy sailing with?
The years spent with Tabarly were magical. He was fourteen years older than me. I was his sailor then his second in command. Watching him decide, I learned to decide. When he was criticized, he didn't care. Like him, I thought that not being managers of other people's brains, we were not responsible for their thinking. It was their problem, not ours. Eric was a tight man.
This is how you portray yourself anyway. When two such tight men live together on the same boat, the relationship must be dry, right?
We spoke very little to each other. We were only interested in action. From time to time, I made him laugh. He was like the Americans: you take off your hat, he laughs, you put it back on, he laughs too!
Brittany is difficult to navigate. It is the place in the world where there are the most stones, markers and lighthouses per square meter. Not counting the currents. Someone who has trained extensively there is capable of sailing just about anywhere in the world.
There are some very beautiful passages in your book about your crews, and the way you chose your men. What did you trust?
I just have to watch a guy walk across the bridge to know what he's worth.
Do you consider Brittany to be the best place in the world to learn to sail?
The six skippers entered in the Arkéa Ultim Challenge 2024 were Breton and their boats built in Brittany. Do you need another argument? This is explained: Brittany, especially in the north, is difficult to navigate. It is the place in the world where there are the most stones, markers and lighthouses per square meter. Not counting the currents. Someone who has trained extensively there is capable of sailing just about anywhere in the world.
You might have the impression that the world of racing no longer interested you. However, in your book, you are full of praise for this competition won by Charles Caudrelier…
I have traveled around the world a lot of times in a multihull. Seeing these guys go solo on boats of this size, which travel at an average of 27 knots, for more than forty days, it amazed me. It makes me very happy to see that there is a generation continuing what we have tried to do for fifty years.
Among the six skippers, is there one who impressed you more than the others?
To lead these boats, at this speed, on this course, you have to be a great champion. I am admiring. Thomas Coville was a sailor with me. He made his first world tour alongside me. Its sponsor, Sodebo, is a family business from Vendée, which has focused its communication on sailing, with all the risks that this entails. We don't talk enough about this commitment.
Have you ever wanted to go see what was happening underwater, to explore the abyss with an oceanographic submarine?
I dove with Perle, the nuclear attack submarine. I was in the sea like I've never been before. I'm claustrophobic but not there. When you are listening, you see the trawler in front, the freighter behind slowing down, more than if you were on the surface. It's extraordinary.
Hearing, is it the sailor's real secret?
The old people told me that they could find their way in the mist by the sound of the waves on the stones when they crossed what we call “the Chaussée de Sein”, between the island of Sein and the Ar-Men lighthouse. . It’s sound geography. Ancestral knowledge.
You started sailing in 1967-1968. Weren't you a sixty-eighter?
I was 24 years old in 1968. Having a little culture, I learned that the guys who started revolutions often became the first victims. It didn't really interest me. The characteristic of man is to adapt. However, not succeeding, the revolutionaries want to change the world. That's their problem.
Was it through contact with the Polynesians that you became a little more eco-friendly?
Sixty years ago, no one was green. In the ports, the guys who were changing their oil threw the oil into the sea. When I was a child, you couldn't swim in northern Brittany without touching tar. Everything that had sunk in the Channel during the war had dropped loads of trash. Ecology has moved from observation to declarations to behavior and, at times, to religion. In all of this, we have to sort it out.
Risks are meant to be taken. Isn't it more dangerous not to risk your life? Fear almost always proves to be a bad advisor.
Our age's aversion to risk horrifies you. Have we entered what the philosopher Pascal Bruckner calls “the civilization of the slipper”?
Risks are meant to be taken. Isn't it more dangerous not to risk your life? Fear almost always proves to be a bad advisor. One of my sponsors, Henri Lachmann, asked me one day: “Olivier, what are the risks? “. I replied: “Henri, there are only risks”. So he had this sentence: “That’s good!” We have to go.” Magellan did not bother with this kind of consideration! The greatest of all sailors is him! His expedition is the first gesture of globalization.
What hasn't the sea taught you?
I was happy, you can't know how happy. I loved my job. I was never bored. I lost a boat, broke masts. At the end of my book, I publish my navigation report. I sailed, on average, eight months a year!
At the start of this interview, you mentioned the graves of your grandparents and your parents. Do you sometimes go there to meditate?
I'm going to see my dead, yes. I take the time to stay with them for a while. It allows me to think.
We can't imagine that a seafarer like you would want to be buried after his death…
I don't care! They can go Canigou with me if they want. The only point of the grave is to maintain a connection.
