At Home On Small Boats And Big Water
he smaller the boat, the bigger the adventure. So simple, so good, so true. I recently felt the need to scratch this itch so I can wear a you-know-what-eating grin for a while.
This year’s edition of my Lilliput fantasy included a spin on the PT Eleven, a “nesting” dinghy that patient and determined folks build from a kit offered by Port Townsend Watercraft. Although neither my Zen level nor my epoxy skills warrant a plunge into that kind of project, I wangled a ride on a completed model, which blinded me with its Gucci appearance and surprised me because it was as much fun to sail as it was to row. In superhero terms, it felt like Super-Soldier Serum followed by Vita-Ray treatment as I pottered around the beachfront of Point Hudson.
And then a strange-looking craft came out to play. It had three hulls, a raked mast and a square-top mainsail showing the French Tricolore and “Liteboat” stenciled along the leach. In the cockpit, I noticed a set of giant oars and one guy at the controls. Capt. America he wasn’t, but perhaps the French cousin of Superman?
“Salut, comment • a va? What is a Liteboat?” It wasn’t the most polished way to start a conversation, but I’m glad I asked. Mathieu Bonnier, 59, owns a small boatbuilding operation in Pontcharra, near Grenoble in the French Alps, called Liteboat. He and six employees build performance rowing craft that are a notch less extreme than all-out racing shells but a notch more stable and, thus, suitable for rough water.
Bonnier is not a household name in sailing circles because he isn’t a sailor. He is ocean-rowing royalty. He finished second in the Bouvet Rames Guyane, a trans-Atlantic solo rowing race from Senegal to French Guyana, and rowed solo from Qaanaaq, Greenland, to Nome, Alaska, through the Northwest Passage to raise awareness about the effects of global warming in the Arctic. He also has crossed Alaska on skis in the winter and, as a veterinarian, brings his dog, Tico, on his adventures. He’s a nice guy who is trim, fit, cultured and soft-spoken, but when it comes to discussing personal limits, he’s way, way out there.
Bonnier came to Port Townsend, Washington, to test a new frontier and generate some buzz for his boats while competing in the second edition of the Race to Alaska, aka R2AK. It’s a crazy affair that’s open to practically any wingnut with a boat, as long as the boat is powered only by wind and muscle. The race takes competitors 750 miles from Port Townsend to Ketchikan, Alaska, through the Inside Passage, with a stop in Victoria, British Columbia.
“It is my first time, so I am here to learn,” Bonnier says with the humility of someone who knows and respects the ocean. “I’m not a sailor, so I had to take lessons from my brother who’d done the Mini Transat three times.”
The Mini Transat also is the connecting point to the designer he chose for his boat: Sam Manuard, the Frenchman known for his speedy Class 40s and Mini Transat 6.50 racers. He also is the lead designer of Seascape sailboats from Slovenia, which are popular in Europe and are slowly finding their way to the United States. In fact, one competitor entered a Seascape 18 in the R2AK.
Right Tools for the Trade
“This is a prototype that was built from an existing mold,” Bonnier says of his Liteboat. The hull is too narrow for a cabin, so he has to make due with a cockpit tent. “I will stop for the night to rest and recover,” he says. And he’ll seek out layover ports with some semblance of infrastructure to charge the batteries that power his electronics.
“We also chose a small sailing rig that won’t get me in trouble, with a 5.3-square-meter main [57 square feet, roughly the Laser Radial’s sail area] and an 8-square-meter gennaker,” he says.
For someone who has crossed the Atlantic — “a stupid thing to do, because it’s boring as hell” — 750 miles up the coast might be considered a walk in the park. But unlike entrants who come here long on