Avistamiento de delfines en Altea COLABORACIÓN ESPECIAL

ERIc tAbARly, thE gREAt fREnch
nAvIgAtOR. hE hAd An InnOvAtIvE
chARActER And A SpEcIAl nAtURE
He was a genius navigating,
an admired icon, yet paid dearly
for poor security on board. Born
in Nantes on July 24, 1931, soon
entered the world of sailing. His
innovative character and his special
nature, elevated him to the top
of his professional sailing career,
which would last a lifetime. He was
very keen on ocean racing and won
several times the OSTAR, with the
two versions of his legendary yacht,
the Pen Duick I. Tabarly built several
successors of the sailing ship: the Pen
Duick II, with which he won his first
major victory in 1964, the Pen Duick
III, aluminium hull, the Pen Duick
IV, the first racing trimaran, the Pen
Duick V, the first with ballast, and the
Pen Duick VI, a special ketch twenty
meters long, built to go around the
world, with which he won his second
solo Transat in 1976.
He taught an entire generation of
French sailors: Philippe Poupon,
Titouan Lamazou, Olivier de
Kersauson, Marc Pajot. He achieved
victory in a solo transatlantic race,
which raised Tabarly to the status of
a legend, which later would give him
the Legion of Honour of France for
his triumph. In a short time Tabarly
had not only competed in races like
the Sydney Hobart, the Fastnet Race
and the Transpac, winning honours in
all of them and setting a new record
in the Transpac, but also started new
plans to compete in a new edition
of the Whitbread Round the World
Race. He was a remarkable man for
his inventions, different from the rest
and eager to achieve new goals,
created the so-called “ballast tank”
MG Magazine 38
a system using two 500-liter tanks
on the port and starboard, and with
which he managed to replace the
counterweight of the crew on some
of his journeys alone, specifically
on the Transoceanic race in 1969,
Always anxious to achieve new goals, created the socalled
“ballast tank” to replace the counterweight
of the crew.
achieving a difference of 11 days with
respect to the 2nd who qualified.
His ocean exploits always attracted
the attention of fans and admirers,
however, as every hero that goes
into the unknown and unexpected,
the French navigator succumbed to
his own risks and the sea took his life
away.
The sea snatched his life
away in his first sailing
boat, the Pen Duick I
On the night of the 12th to 13th June
1998, the Pen Duick I was sailing on
the Irish sea in atrocious weather
conditions. A small jib and two reefs
in the mainsail seemed too much for
the skipper, so he decided to take
down the entire sail and replace it for
the storm jib. The four crew members
who accompanied Tabarly, didn’t
have a lot of sailing experience, one
was a photographer, the other a
French naval officer and two skiing
colleagues.”Lacking support from
the mainsail, the yacht which was
sailing down wind, lurched violently,
the boom crossed the deck at such
a speed and hit Tabarly in the chest
which swept him overboard without
remedy.” The desperate search after
the warning call of “man overboard”
was in vain. It was a terrible blow
to those who had learned from him,
his philosophy had always insinuated
that the meaning of life, was to give
life a meaning and Tabarly knew just
how to do that.