Capitaine Ulysse

There are several bottles of champagne and cava knocking about the house but the best one is at the bottom of my tool box, under a fine sheen of sawdust. I don’t know if it’s the best place for storing plonk of this calibre but the flexible organisational structure of the Invisible Workshop permits a degree of domestic overlap. The bottle in question came from a valued friend of mine, Jean-Martial Audy, and I hope to break it on the bows of Onawind Blue at the launch.

It was my cruise to Ibiza last summer with Martial, aboard his boat Capitaine Ulysse that tipped the scales of my boating dream and set in motion the small personal odyssey that is the building of Onawind Blue and the writing of this blog. As such it seems fitting to use Martial’s bottle to launch my waterborne adventure.

Martial is a yachtsman of the Moitessier school of thought—a single-handed, long distance, sea tramp who’s garnered much knowledge and many yarns in his extensive career.

In the 70’s he bought a Chinese junk and coasted down from France to Ibiza. Here he cruised, worked and chartered for the best part of three years before selling up and returning to France to oversee the building of his present boat Capitaine Ulysse. (The junk can still be found in Balearic waters.) Built in Normandy between 1979 and 81 Capitaine Ulysse is one of eight Trisbal 42s. These are tough, blue-water cruisers characterised by their sturdy aluminium hulls, drop keels and fractional rigs.

Our trip was fairly typical of a cruise in the western Mediterranean in that we saw the entire gamut of Mediterranean weather in the 72 hour crossing. From glassy calms to marauding thunder storms of towering cumulus shooting off 50 knot winds, strafing hail and firework displays of ear-splitting proximity; all this contrasting with steady force fours on the stern quarter, dolphins and clear blue skies. In all weathers Martial managed his craft with a gentle, easy-going calm that told of many nautical miles in three different oceans.

In late 81 he sailed away from Fecamp on the Normandy coast and spent the best part of 17 years cruising the Caribbean, Hawaii, Alaska, California, Polynesia and Chile.

He returned by way of Cape Horn but met a storm as he turned left into the Atlantic. The shallow waters over the continental shelf off eastern Argentina jacked up the swell to form savage rollers. Helming Ulysse from the interior steering position Martial felt the stern lift and saw the speed indicator rise to 15 knots as the boat started to surf. But this was a huge wave and as it steepened Ulysse started to slew to one side, to broach to, in one mad second the wave broke, rolling and de-masting the boat.

The damaged Capitaine was towed into Port Stanley in the Falkland Isles where Martial put the conveniently mastless boat in a container for storage and returned to France to re-group. A year later he was back in Port Stanley where he spent three months fitting out Capitaine Ulysse for the journey north. After a spate of bad storms he eventually left, escorting Karen Thorndike, the first American woman to complete a single-handed circumnavigation passing the three stormy capes, in her Rival 36 to the Argentine coast.

Nowadays Capitaine Ulysse leads a calmer life, Martial has carried out various projects to make the boat more comfortable for Mediterranean cruising, a re-designed interior, a larger fridge and a bimini. But there’s no disguising Ulysse’s blue-water pedigree; with sails and centreboards balanced and a lively wind from abaft the beam the Capitaine, galloping among the white horses, shakes manes of spray from the bows.

Capitaine Ulysse and Jean-Martial.