Book launch: Sailing for future: sailing around the world with a cat and brains

When Corentin de Chatelperron visits boot Düsseldorf in January 2020, he arrives barefoot in sandals. Sure, it's a little cold, says the 36-year-old Frenchman with the frizzy hair and open laugh. But he doesn't have any other shoes. Besides, he has just come off the boat from Mexico, so he doesn't need warm shoes anyway.

Corentin de Chatelperron is as unusual as the project he has been working on for four years. Since then, his circumnavigation with the catamaran "Nomade des Mers" (French for "sea nomad") has taken him almost around the globe. Including mast breakage and other minor and major disasters, and above all: against the prevailing wind direction. But he didn't even know that when he set off.

Original solutions sought

After all, Corentin de Chatelperron is only a sailor and navigator in second place. The engineer's primary passion is tinkering and inventing. Since 2016, he has been sailing from continent to continent with a changing crew to find, try out, develop and disseminate low-tech solutions around the world.

Skipper and inventor Corentin de Chatelperron summarises the project (French with English subtitles)

His team is testing original solutions for the sustainable utilisation and reuse of resources on site. In Morocco, for example, it has developed a technique for desalinating seawater; in Madagascar it has extracted algae for food and in Sri Lanka it has utilised plastic waste.

Greenhouse in the saloon, chickens at the stern

Their ship, a Kennex 445 VPLP catamaran, serves as a laboratory, providing the crew with a self-sufficient supply of energy and food. The saloon resembles a greenhouse, a chicken coop is attached to the stern and home-grown insects supplement the galley.

All of this may sound like a more than exotic adventure - and that is exactly what the likeable Frenchman from Vannes is an expert in. This is not his first expedition in search of greater sustainability.

In a jute fibre boat through pirate territory

After studying engineering, Corentin de Chatelperron worked in a shipyard in Bangladesh and developed a boat made of 40 per cent jute composite material. To prove its performance as a boat building material, he quickly sailed the "Tara Tari" from Bangladesh to Africa and through the Red Sea back to France at a time when attacks by Somali pirates in the region were at their peak. It was his first major voyage, which was highly publicised in France and sometimes life-threatening at sea.

But the young engineer catches fire and builds his next prototype, this time made entirely from jute fibres. He then sails for six months through the Bay of Bengal and begins to devise low-tech solutions on board in his quest for self-sufficiency.

Documentary for television

And now the circumnavigation. Since setting sail in February 2016, the "Nomades des Mers" has rounded Africa and the Cape of Good Hope, crossed the Indian and Pacific Oceans, passed through the Panama Canal and has now reached the Atlantic coast of Mexico. Countless stopovers, encounters, adventures and inventions lie in the crew's wake.

The television channel Arte is accompanying the journey and 15 episodes have already been broadcast under the title "With compass and brains on the high seas". Further episodes are planned for this year.

Trailer for the ARTE documentary about the unusual round-the-world voyage

240 pages of tinkering and sailing

A book about the French crew's fascinating circumnavigation has also recently been published in German ("Sailing for future. Around the world with low-tech and low-budget", Delius Klasing Verlag, 24.90 euros). In it, the skipper not only reports on the sailing challenges of sailing around the world against the prevailing wind direction; together with co-author Nina Fasciaux, he also presents the low-tech projects that the crew put together during the first half of the voyage - including instructions for rebuilding them.

YACHT readers will soon be able to read the whole story of Corentin de Chatelperron and the catamaran "Nomade des Mers", which is as hair-raising as it is fascinating.

Project website: https://lowtechlab.org