A LONELY WILD VOYAGE
Pierre Huglo sails his Contessa 32 around the world
I remember very well my I first conversation with French philosophy teacher Pierre Huglo when he called up the Jeremy Rogers boat yard in Lymington. ‘There’s a Frenchman on the phone who wants to take part in the Golden Globe Race in his Contessa 32.’ As it happened the configuration of the keel prohibited him from entering but the name Pierre Huglo was etched in my brain and the enormity of the challenge he wanted to embark on equally so. The next year he contacted us again. He would join the fleet of boats sailing around the world as part of La Longue Route. This ‘endeavour’ was conceived by seasoned navigator Guy Bernardin and was not exactly a race but a single-handed, non-stop circumnavigation inspired by the legendary French sailor Bernard Moitessier who famously abandoned the 1968 Golden Globe Race to ‘save his soul’, eventually making landfall in Tahiti.
Pierre Huglo’s journey to find a suitable boat for the circumnavigation was a long one and it was decades before he was introduced to, and fell in love with the Contessa 32, which have always been built by the Jeremy Rogers yard. One of his pre Contessa solo journeys ended in disaster when his Pogo 850 capsized and left him clinging to the upturned hull mid Atlantic hoping for rescue. It was then he realised he needed a more steadfast companion and something very different. But what?
A FRESH START
‘I was looking for a small big boat or a big small boat but I didn’t know what exactly – I wanted something that was a pleasure to look at and to sail.’ Inspiration came from a fellow sailor, a friend with an encyclopaedic knowledge of everything to do with boats, guitars and bicycles. ‘My friend is one of those people who is very focused on certain things and knew everything there is to know about every boat right from the 1960s. He came to me and said, Pierre, what you need is a Contessa 32.’
By November of that year Fresh Herring had been bought and after a six-month refit was ready to take offshore. ‘I realised straight away that the Contessa 32 had the right feeling in the water, and that it’s not about actual speed but relative speed; the way the boat moves through the water.’
Over the following 10
years Pierre took Fresh Herring out for extended periods at sea, partly to satisfy his need to find himself in true wilderness but also to sail better and to get to know his boat. In the back of his mind was always a circumnavigation but for many years life and family commitments kept him at home. Then, in 2018 after years of dreaming and planning, he embarked on the Longue Route with every intention of racing as hard as he could, every mile of the way.
At the core of Pierre’s philosophy for sailing and life is to keep things simple and the Longue Route was no exception. Fresh Herring already had hank-on foresails and Pierre removed the engine to increase her capacity for carrying the provisions he would need for the trip. Fresh Herring was fitted with a Plexiglas dome on top of the companionway with a system to be able to helm from the inside. A windvane self-steering system was another essential piece of equipment along with a small wind turbine and a portable solar panel to generate electricity. Down below Pierre fitted the boat with two watertight bulkheads; one between the mast and the forward cabin, the other one behind the chart table at the top of the quarter berth dividing the hull into three watertight compartments (the two lockers in the cockpit were watertight too). He carried a satellite phone, two portable GPS units, a sextant, a VHF radio and an EPIRB but no method of receiving any offshore
meteorological information other than a barometer. The freedom from worrying about receiving forecasts meant he was diverted by the weather only as it happened, not by the threat of what might be coming. ‘My route was, roughly speaking, decided before I left.’ Pierre planned his voyage using pilot books based on years of statistical information about current, average wind speed, calms and ice limits. In the Indian Ocean Fresh Herring didn’t stray further south than 45° so that Pierre would always find himself north of the centre of the low-pressure systems and therefore able to take advantage of any ensuing westerlies.
WHATEVER THE WEATHER...
Although he conceded that it would sometimes have been good to know what weather to expect, on balance he felt that not having access to forecasts was the right decision for him. ‘If you know two days in advance you have 50 knots coming then you can spend that time feeling anxious and once you are on a small boat in the middle of the ocean there’s not a lot you can do.’ Without forecasts, he argued, you are forced to be more in contact with the elements, looking at the sky and the clouds, the direction of the wind and being very conscious of your surroundings. Did he also slightly enjoy the sense of jeopardy, I wondered? ‘Yes, it is also a little like gambling – I like knowing that it is all down to me and no one else, maybe a little like a tightrope walker – that the possibility of falling is always there but if I do it right, I know I won’t.’
His predetermined route took him across the Equator at 28° west, much further than his rivals, to avoid the doldrums and also further south than any other competitor in either the Longue Route or the 2018 Golden Globe and his track is fascinating to follow; whilst other competitors zig-zag their way around the world, Pierre’s route often follows longer and straighter lines, illustrating a confidence he felt in those hostile waters. ‘For me the race was all about getting to the Southern Ocean, it excites me in a positive way and I feel peaceful there too, I can’t really explain it but it feels more than anywhere else like home – I like to be in the middle of nowhere and this is the most isolated place on the planet.’
There is no question that Pierre is a man who is energised by isolation and extreme pressure, perhaps
only ever truly happy when pushing himself and his boat to the limits of endurance. Despite being psychologically fulfilled, there was no question that the constant pressure he put on himself to maintain an average of 5 knots over the ground took its toll on Pierre physically. With strict rationing because of limited space on board he realised he had slightly under-provisioned and in the extreme cold of the south he found it hard to maintain his body weight. Rounding New Zealand Pierre endured a frustrating two weeks making poor progress in very little wind, after which he decided to abandon his plan to use the old pilot book average data for ice limits and instead use more recent Vendée Globe records which revealed that the retreating ice would allow him to venture nearly 10° further south at around 50°, thereby shortening the trip.
Finally rounding Cape Horn Pierre was now on the ‘home stretch’ but with 8,000 miles still to go, the South Atlantic had more in store to test him. What followed was 15 days of winds fluctuating in direction and strength between 10 and 50 knots each 24 hours. This was an ordeal that tested Pierre to the limit of his endurance but he was determined to keep on racing. ‘I would much prefer steady, very strong weather than this fluctuation because it’s the constant sail changing that exhausts you and that’s when you can make mistakes.’
OF SEA AND LIFE...
Perhaps remarkably, despite the exhaustion he must have felt, the only real injury Pierre sustained was not far from the Azores when he slipped and fell on to a winch. ‘It made me realise that I was as vulnerable now as I was before, it’s what I like about sailing – even if you have a lot of experience you still have to be very cautious, to be very aware of everything, because something can always happen, so you must keep your humility when you sail. This is the right way to approach the sea and life, with humility.’
You might be forgiven for thinking that after a final leg from the Azores to the Channel in Force 7-10 Pierre would have been happy for it all to stop as he sailed back into Ouistreham last year. But that would be to fundamentally misunderstand Pierre Huglo, a man who feels most at home when he is out at sea, a man who feels most protected by the loneliest parts of the ocean.