Jeantot, Superstar of the Sea

By Michael Demarest

A French solo sailor breaks round-the-world records

One of the finishers has worked as a dogsled driver in Antarctica. Another has pushed a cab in Tokyo and helped lead a Japanese expedition to the North Pole. One of the younger old salts set a deep-sea diving record off his native France in 1977. An odds-on favorite was a 56-year-old Aussie who was sailing the oceans when some of his rivals were playing with boats in their bathtubs. A competitor from Eastern Europe, a Czech, has written ten books on sea adventure, and applied for political asylum hi the U.S. last August.

It was on the 28th of that month that the above-mentioned stalwarts, along with eleven other skippers, frisked away into the whitecaps off Newport, R.I., in the first singlehanded round-the-world sailing race to begin and end in the U.S. At 7:11 a.m. on May 9, or 159 days 2 hr. 26 min. after the starting gun (not counting the weeks of layovers between legs), the first of the solo sailors came home from the sea. Only ten had remained in the race, battering their way through more than 27,000 nautical miles of doldrums and depressions, reefs, icebergs and storms. Horrendous winds and waves destroyed three yachts and knocked out four others but did not kill or seriously injure any of their skippers.

The winner was Philippe Jeantot, the deep-sea diver from Concarneau, France, who idled across the finish line the day after his 31st birthday. At the start of the race, Jeantot was unknown to the racing world, though he had made four single-handed Atlantic crossings. Yet on the first of the race's four legs, the 7,100-miles from Newport to Cape Town, he piled up a one-week, 1,500-mile lead over his nearest competitor. That was the way it went, around the world; across the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean to Sydney, Australia; through the roaring forties and raging fifties of the southern ocean to Cape Horn, the sailor's nemesis; then on to Rio de Janeiro; and during the relatively tranquil run back to Newport.

Jeantot, in his black-and-yellow aluminum-hulled cutter prosaically named Credit Agricole for the bank that sponsored it, beat by an astonishing 28 1/2 days the previous record for a single-hulled boat, set last year by Australian Neville Gosson. This time Gosson was expected to finish fourth among the larger boats. Jeantot's eleven-ton 56-footer even shaved ten days off the previous single-handed circumnavigation record, set in a trimaran by fellow Frenchman Alain Colas in 1973-74. Jeantot's large monohull also set new race records for the fastest noon-to-noon run (240 miles) and seven-day run (1,552 miles). In France, an instant national hero was born. Jeantot, Superstar; Jeantot, King of the Sea; Jean-tot, the Absolute Conqueror, toasted the French press, which sent 52 representatives to cover his victorious arrival in Newport.

In second place, a cumulative 11 days 14 hr. behind Jeantot, came South African S.J. ("Bertie") Reed, 39, sailing the 15-year-old, 49-ft. sloop Altech Voortrekker, which he pronounced the world's most uncomfortable boat of its size. Next, 65 hr. 35 min. later, came Czechoslovakia's Richard Konkolski, 39, who had refused to quit despite repeated damage to his 44-ft. sloop Nike III.

Eagerly awaited during the weekend was Britain's Richard Broadhead on the 52-ft. cutter Perseverance of Medina. When Frenchman Jacques de Roux's Skoiern III was smashed by high seas in the southern ocean Broadhead dashed 318 miles to rescue his sinking rival.

The last boat is not expected home for a good two weeks. At a ceremony in Newport scheduled for May 28, BOC Group, the British-based industrial conglomerate that sponsored the race, will divide $50,000 between the winner of the small-boat class and Jeantot, the large-boat victor.

A muscular, 163-lb. athlete who has a black belt in judo, Jeantot walked off his floating home at Newport as jauntily as if he were returning from a stroll. Of the few bad times during the voyage, the worst, he said, came between Sydney and Cape Horn, when he had to go far south to pick up the prevailing westerly wind. For 13 days near 58DEG south latitude, he never saw the sun and at tunes could not even see the top of his mast. "Everything on board was wet and cold," he recalls, "and it was dangerous when I went to sleep. I couldn't know if I would crash with an iceberg." On two occasions his boat was knocked down flat in the water, and the rudder was badly damaged.

Unlike Sir Francis Chichester, the late great British circumnavigator who spliced the main brace with gin, rum, whisky, brandy, wine and beer, Jeantot consumed no liquor during the trip; through heavy spray and parching sun, however, he remained a heavy smoker of unfiltered Gauloises. Bachelor Philippe is no gourmet, preparing three shipboard meals a day from one can each of vegetables, meat and dessert, heated on his butane stove and forked out of the can directly to save dishwashing. Jeantot's only hedonistic indulgence was a cassette player, with which he regaled himself with favorites that ranged from Pink Floyd to Jacques Brel to Beethoven's Ninth.

His state-of-the-craft boat was another matter. Jeantot, who has dreamed of little else but circumnavigating the globe since he was a teenager, sank almost every franc he had saved as a highly paid diver into the $270,000 project. His greatest good fortune may have been to meet Naval Architect Guy Ribadeau-Dumas in 1982. Ribadeau-Dumas, 32, who had already designed successful racers, built several ingenious engineering features into Credit Agricole, notably a seawater ballast system that permits speedy adjustment of the boat's trim.

Solo sailors hi an organized race rarely experience the hallucinations and despair that have traditionally afflicted single-handers. One reason is that they are seldom cut off from the real world. Jeantot, for example, talked by radio daily to friends in France. He was also in regular contact with a Rhode Island ham radio operator. All the racers were equipped with a sophisticated electronics system known as Argos that prints out satellite weather information and provides the boat's precise location in latitude and longitude, relieving the mariner's ancient fear that he is lost. "They don't even need a sextant," harrumphed one old waterfront sage.

No circuitry, however, can ward off the perils of the ocean. Experienced sailors ran aground several times. Second-Place Finisher Reed watched in helpless panic "when a whale tried mating with me," nearly smashing the boat. There is no panacea for thirst, chronic lack of sleep, perpetual cold and clammy discomfort. Why, then, knowing all this, do sailors set out alone, again and again? Not merely because it is there. Explains Philippe Jeantot: "Because it is difficult. I enjoy succeeding in difficult things."

--By Michael Demarest This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.