124 Boating New Zealand
in a spearfishing gun. A large shark damaged his ankle before he
punched it on the nose, but the encounter restricted his earnings.
In less than a year his new boat was finished – built from local
timbers in a basic fashion. A year later he cast off his lines and
sailed for Durban, suffering a total knock down on the way. At one
point he hove-to and dived over the side with a saw, spending an
hour perfecting the self-steering trim tab.
Luck was on his side in Durban – a friend managed to fake him
a job as a shipwright. He eventually became a valuable asset by
demonstrating how to fix minor leaks in the local wooden fishing
boats by diving over and applying a mix of clay and cement, a
technique he’d learnt from Indonesian fisherman. For the job he
devised a crude air bell that allowed him to stay underwater for
over a minute.Moitessier’s best
known books are:
Un Vagabond
des mers du sud,
1960 (translated
as Sailing to the
Reefs); Cap Horn
a la Voile: 14216
milles sans escale,
1967 (Cape Horn:
The Logical Route);
La longue route;
seule entre mers
et ciels, 1971 (The
Long Way, 1973);
Tamata et l’alliance,
1993 (Tamata and
the Alliance, 1995)
and Voile, Mers
Lontaines, Iles et
Lagons, 1995 (A Sea
Vagabond’s World,
1998).PROLIFIC
WRITERRIGHT He was
proficient with a
slingshot – and
once, in mid-
ocean, used it to
get a message to
a passing ship.I am a citizen of the most beautiful nation
on earth, a nation whose laws are harsh yet
simple, a nation that never cheats, which is
immense and without borders, where life is
lived in the present. In this limitless nation,
this nation of wind, light, and peace, there is
no other ruler but the sea.Bernard Moitessier