Bernard Moitessier

One of the greatest seafaring adventurers of all time, French sailor and author Bernard Moitessier (1925-1994) gained notoriety in 1969 after completing a solo, 10-month, nonstop trip in which he circled the globe one and a half times, logging 37,455 miles without setting foot on land. An avid skipper and gifted writer, Moitessier wrote about his journeys at sea, and his books remain favorites among maritime enthusiasts.

Raised in French Indochina

Moitessier was born on April 10, 1925, in what is now Vietnam, but at the time was known as French Indochina. His parents hailed from France but had relocated to Southeast Asia a few weeks before his birth. Back then, Vietnam was a French colony filled with plantations that exported cash crops like tobacco, indigo, tea and coffee. Moitessier's mother had studied art at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. His father, Robert, had a business degree from the Paris-based Hautes Études Commerciales. Once in Vietnam, Moitessier's father ran a small importing business in Saigon.

The oldest of five children, Moitessier grew up in a privileged household that included a nanny and cook, and rides to elementary school in a rickshaw. Their home was enormous, complete with offices and storerooms for Robert Moitessier's business. The place overflowed with Ovaltine and barrels of wine. In the courtyards, workers washed and refilled bottles with wine, then crated them for delivery to shopkeepers. Despite their father's success, the children grew up in a Spartan household without amenities like mattresses. They slept like the Vietnamese, on little mats atop wooden pallets. A strict disciplinarian, Robert Moitessier admonished his children for poor posture and whipped them for misbehavior and especially for poor grades.

One of Moitessier's favorite childhood activities was shooting his slingshot. In Saigon the streets were lined with fruit trees bursting with mangoes and tamarinds. Moitessier and his friends knocked down the fruits with their slingshots, making sure to hit the stem so as not to bruise the fruit. He also enjoyed visiting the market, where the streets were clogged with peddlers and artisans, bicycles and horse-drawn carts. He rarely saw a motorized vehicle in Saigon.

Drawn to the Sea

Moitessier sometimes skipped school to stroll the riverbanks and watch the Chinese sailing vessels known as junks. He was particularly intrigued by the boats from the Annam coast, which resembled the fish baskets he saw at the market. The bow—or front part—was made of wood, but the majority of the hull was constructed from woven bamboo sealed with a mixture of cow manure, a tar-like resin known as pitch, and wood oil. One day, Moitessier befriended a sailor from one of the vessels and was invited on board. The man demonstrated how the rudder worked and told Moitessier the vessel could carry 50 tons of rice. Moitessier told the man he would give anything to sail away with him. When they finally said goodbye, the man gave Moitessier a replica of his boat, carved from a coconut.

The Moitessier family spent summer vacations in a village close to the Cambodian border on the Gulf of Siam, where Robert Moitessier had received a land grant to plant rice. The village where they stayed consisted of a mile-long stretch of about 20 mud huts with thatched roofs. For the villagers, fishing was a way of life. The community owned about five junks, which everyone shared. Fascinated with all things nautical, Moitessier helped the village men repair and caulk the boats at the start of each fishing season. His favorite part was going out on the open sea with them.

For Moitessier, trips to the remote village became the most vibrant part of his childhood. “There, my brothers and I lived in almost limitless freedom, a freedom of the senses and the body so intense we practically turned into little jungle animals,” he recalled in his memoir, Tamata and the Alliance. Returning to Saigon each fall for school was rough on Moitessier. During class, he gazed out the windows and daydreamed about life beyond the school walls, covering his notebooks with sketches of boats. In his memoir, Moitessier wrote that a teacher once remarked: “You are not only a lazy dunce, but a cretin and an incorrigible. Boys like you never amount to anything in life. Given to anarchy.” By age 15, Moitessier had been kicked out of all the local schools and ended up at a newly opened agriculture school that sat 30 miles from Saigon on the edge of the jungle.

Fought in the Indochina War

After finishing school, Moitessier, just 18, landed a job at the Indochinese Rubber Plantation Company, where he supervised some 300 workers. Each day he covered more than 20 miles on his bicycle, overseeing every aspect of the operation, from the planting to the harvesting of the latex. One day, as Moitessier was studying a stately tree, he had a vision that prompted him to leave the job. Writing in his memoir, Moitessier recalled the experience of telling his boss he was leaving. “I told him that my father needed me in his business in Saigon and also for his rice paddies, which was true. But I didn't tell him about the tree I had found in the forest while hunting …. The tree that climbed to the sky as I looked at it … and which became planks … which became a junk … and which was telling me that the world is limitless.”

Moitessier returned to Saigon and settled into life running the family business, though the job felt suffocating to him. World War II was in full swing, and tensions in Southeast Asia mounted as Japanese and French forces jockeyed for control of the area. The war ended in 1945, but the fighting was far from over in Vietnam, as the pro-Communist Viet Minh continued their war for independence, seeking unification of the area. Anti-French demonstrations became common and the Viet Minh killed off Frenchmen and pro-French Vietnamese. Moitessier and his brothers joined the Volunteer Liberation Group, which was composed of French and Eurasian soldiers who sought to overthrow the Viet Minh. Eventually, Moitessier landed aboard the Gazelle, a 600-ton gunboat operated by the French military. He was taken on board as an interpreter because he spoke Vietnamese fluently, and spent the next several months patrolling the waters of Southeast Asia. After being discharged from the military, he rejoined his father's business.

Took to the Winds

In 1952 Moitessier's dream came true—he finally procured his own boat, the Marie-Thérèse, and set sail from Kampot, Cambodia, in search of life on the open sea; he was 27. Less than a year later, he encountered a monsoon and wrecked his boat on the Chagos atoll in the Indian Ocean. A British naval ship rescued Moitessier and delivered him to the island of Mauritius, where he worked odd jobs and built a new ship from scratch. Around 1955 he set sail in his new ship, the Marie-Thérèse II. He sailed to South Africa, Brazil, and the West Indies before wrecking near Trinidad in 1958. At 34, Moitessier found himself a penniless, shipwrecked castaway. He returned to France and took a job as a drug salesman. At around this time he began writing, and published Vagabond des Mers du Sud (Sailing to the Reefs) in 1960, which described his early sea misadventures.

While in France, Moitessier met and married a woman named Franc¸oise. He also procured another ship—the twin-masted, steel-built, 39-foot-long, red-bottomed Joshua. Ready for another adventure, Moitessier and his wife set sail in 1963. During one leg of their “honeymoon” trip, they sailed 14,216 miles from the French Polynesian Island of Moorea to Alicante, Spain, in 126 days without stopping at any ports. Their journey ended in Europe in 1966 and Moitessier settled down to write a book about the trip, Cap Horn à la Voile (Cape Horn: The Logical Route). In this book, Moitessier gives a firsthand account of the delights and dangers that come with sailing around Cape Horn, the southernmost tip of South America, in some of the ocean's most treacherous waters. In nautical circles the book became a must-read, not only for its practical advice, but also for its eloquent passages.

Raced Around the World

In 1968 Moitessier entered the Golden Globe competition—a solo, around-the-world, nonstop yacht race sponsored by Britain's Sunday Times. The course included sailing around Africa's Cape of Good Hope, Australia's Cape Leeuwin and South America's Cape Horn. There were nine contestants. Moitessier set sail from Plymouth, England, on August 21, 1968, aboard the Joshua. In 200 days he covered 33,000 miles. By this time, many of the other sailors had dropped out of the race. Many struggled to weather the storms, gear failures and loneliness of the voyage, all while Moitessier enjoyed the sail immensely. He entertained himself by doing yoga poses naked on the deck, listening to the waves, and communing with nature. Moitessier had a substantial lead as he passed around Cape Horn and had only to sail north, back to England, to win the race and claim the cash prize and celebrity that awaited his arrival. Instead he turned around, deciding he wanted to circle the globe twice.

Moitessier's decision surprised the sailing world, as well as his wife, who suggested seven months of solitude might have driven him mad. Another competitor had committed suicide during the race. Only one man finished. Moitessier finally ran out of supplies and docked at Papeete, Tahiti, on June 21, 1969, having completed a journey of 37,455 miles in 303 days. This is believed to be the world's longest recorded nonstop solo sailing voyage. According to the London Times, Moitessier explained his actions to reporters this way: “You have to understand that when one is months and months alone, one evolves; some say people go nuts. I went crazy in my own fashion. For four months all I saw were the stars. I didn't hear an unnatural sound. A purity grows out of that kind of solitude.” For Moitessier, the purity was so perfect he did not want the feeling to end, so he sailed on.

After the voyage, Moitessier settled in Ahe, Tahiti, and lived in a bamboo beach cottage. He spent the next few years writing La Longue Route (The Long Way), a memoir of the race. It was published in 1974 and Moitessier donated all royalties to the Pope. While in Tahiti, he met Iléana, a French-Romanian woman in search of adventure who was traveling the world with a suitcase full of poetry books. Their son, Stephan, was born in 1971. Moitessier continued sailing, visiting New Zealand in 1973 and Israel in 1974. In 1975 he settled down in Ahe to spend more time with his son. He spent the next few years sailing between the nearby islands and promoting ecological issues. In 1982 he lost the Joshua in a shipwreck near Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and within a year had acquired the Tamata, which he sailed until the end of his life.

During the 1980s Moitessier was a vocal opponent of France's underground nuclear test program, which was detonating devices in French Polynesia. He also wrote hundreds of letters to U.S. publications urging nuclear disarmament. During the last years of his life, Moitessier was busy writing his memoir, Tamata et l'Alliance (Tamata and the Alliance), which he finished in 1993. Moitessier died on June 16, 1994, in Paris, France, and was buried in Brittany, France, in a cemetery filled with sailors and fishermen.