L'éveil du printemps: Le micronavigateur Yann Quenet dévoile bâches et plans

It's nothing unusual these days for sailors to free their boats from their winter tarpaulins and start dreaming about the season's cruises. But when the Breton Yann Quenet lifts the little bit of tarpaulin over his four-metre boat, you can expect something unusual again. As small as the boat is, so big are the plans.

By boat into the mountains

He's back - and with a plan that sounds crazy even by his standards: Yann Quenet, the 57-year-old Breton who has already sailed around the world once in a four-metre boat he built himself, is waking his boat from hibernation. "Hello friends. A great day today!" he announces with a mischievous grin in a video from the Canadian wilderness. After almost five months in a remote log cabin outside Amos in the Quebec region at temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees, he has now freed his legendary, bright red sailing boat "Baluchon" from the masses of snow. "I haven't seen her for five months. Oh, it makes me so happy to see her!"

The extreme cold was exactly what he was looking for - because the unconventional sailor was fulfilling a childhood dream: In a lonely log cabin, surrounded by snow and ice, he lived like in a Jack London novel - chopping wood, snowshoeing, drinking tea and dreaming by the fire. But now a new chapter of his extraordinary journey begins with "Baluchon". "People have been asking me quite strange questions about how I winterised the boat and so on," he says and continues: "There's no engine, there's no plumbing. So there's nothing to do except close everything up and then wait." He only repaired a few minor damages during the winter months, to the hatch, the ventilation sleeves and a small crack in the GRP.

Now a bit of cleaning, then we can continue. Across Canada over the Rocky Mountains to Vancouver - with the sailing boat on the trailer. From there, the minimalist wants to continue his second circumnavigation in the summer. He can't help himself. Since quitting his job in his early 50s, he has dedicated his life to the sea and sailing on a tiny boat. And one thing is certain for him: the adventure continues, whether on the water or over snow-covered mountain passes.

Who is this bizarre Breton?

Yann Quenet from Saint-Brieuc is no ordinary sailor. The self-taught boat builder specialises in small boat projects and has already built several microboats in Brittany. His dream of sailing around the world has been with him his whole life - but it wasn't until he was 50 that he took the plunge. He quit his job, built his own boat and cast off.

"I actually set off on my own and didn't assume that anyone would be interested in what I was doing," says the modest loner. But his minimalist adventure was to cause a worldwide sensation and bring him thousands of followers.

There were certainly moments when the always cheerful-looking man with the distinctive laugh lines around his eyes might not have felt much like joking. Yann's circumnavigation story begins with a shipwreck - that of his first self-built 4.30 metre sailing boat called "Skrowl", with which he set off from Brittany on a solo circumnavigation of the world.

The ill-fated journey began in August 2015 from A Coruña in northern Spain. When it was still 450 miles from Madeira, it was caught up in a storm. That night, a wave caught the "Skrowl" and capsized her. Her position remained stable, but keel up and mostly filled with water. Quenet survived the capsize in an air bubble inside, swam out and climbed onto the slippery hull. He was rescued by a cargo ship. But giving up because of it? Not an option. He built his four-metre boat "Baluchon", an improved design, and started again in 2019

West course, destination: once round

In the three years from 2019 to 2022, Quenet will be the first person to circumnavigate the world in a motorless plywood boat just four metres long. One of those feats that are considered impossible - until someone makes it easy. In his case, "simple" in the truest sense of the word. Uncompromisingly minimalist, the interior of his boat is limited to two square metres. Everything is stored there: bunk, provisions, equipment. A mattress, similar to a gym mat from the sports hall, is embedded in the cabin floor - this keeps Quenet safe in rough weather and offers maximum headroom. His yellow clothes bag serves as a pillow. Food, spare parts and rainwear are stowed in waterproof containers. Cooking is done on a small camping gas cooker attached to the cabin floor. Toilet? None. Shower? None. Standing height? Only with your head out of the hatch.

Its route leads straight west across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. He navigates using only a smartphone as a GPS, charged by a small solar panel. When the batteries fail in the Caribbean, Quenet demonstrates his talent for improvisation: he builds a windvane steering system from old plywood (found in a rubbish bin on Guadeloupe), a PVC pipe, a sawn-through boat hook and a plastic spool for winding fishing line - for less than 20 euros. It works perfectly and steers the "Baluchon" over thousands of nautical miles.

In Panama, he goes on an involuntary shore leave: his boat is too small to pass through the Panama Canal and has to piggyback on a trailer across to the Pacific side. There, his first childhood dream came true: "I dreamed of the Marquesas even as a small child. They are mythical islands that have fallen out of time. I always thought about arriving there on my own keel one day. To actually do it - that was an amazing moment," he says in an interview with YACHT in 2022.

77 days of solitude on the Indian Ocean

The pandemic soon throws a spanner in the works of his cruise plans. Australia refuses to allow him to visit. So Quenet sailed non-stop for 77 days from New Caledonia to La Réunion - one of the longest solo passages ever in such a small boat. "The most difficult thing was to take enough provisions with me on the small boat. I couldn't stow enough water, I had to catch the rain," he recalls. His diet: freeze-dried pasta, tinned sardines, biscuits. Day after day, week after week.

In his book "My Tiny Boat" he describes the conditions: "To get an idea of the conditions, you only have to imagine shooting down an almost 6,000 kilometre-long black ski slope in a bobsleigh, which has previously been under constant artillery fire." For the waves, the "Baluchon" is little more than a ping-pong ball. "The boat lays on its side, straightens up again, a bit like inside a washing machine on spin cycle. You take a beating, but on the other hand I stay there and continue reading as if nothing is wrong."

Later in South Africa, the brave boat is allowed to go ashore once more. You don't have to put it through everything, and that probably includes the peculiar sea and current conditions at the Cape of Good Hope. We leave the water in Richards Bay and then travel around 1,800 kilometres over land to Cape Town. From there, it's homeward bound in the broadest sense, via St Helena to Brazil and finally to Trébeurden in his native Brittany.

At home - or not?

When Quenet reaches his home in Brittany in August 2022, hundreds of people are waiting on the quay. After three years at sea, he can barely walk in a straight line. "I was a bit embarrassed. Everyone must think I'm totally drunk."

He is not, at best he is not quite fit for the countryside in the long term. In his book, he describes how, after almost two years of living on land, a ray of sunshine falls on "Baluchon" in his workshop one morning and his heart leaps for joy. 30,000 nautical miles together, during which the boat has mastered everything with flying colours: "I just wanted to get back to sea as quickly as possible. Anything else would have been foolish." But first the "Baluchon" is extended.

A well thought-out little boat: the "Baluchon"

Quenet had invested around 200 hours in the design and 1,200 euros in the construction of his first boat, the "Skrowl". However, the fact that it did not right itself after capsizing made it unusable for the round-the-world voyage. Quenet learnt from this and developed the self-righting "Baluchon" concept.

The first version of the "Baluchon" is a four metre long plywood keelboat with a blunt-nosed scow hull in bright red and ice cream white - a design with a flat bottom and straight, blunt bow shape that offers maximum volume with minimum length, ideal for an ocean-going microboat. The "bundle" - the German translation of the name - is sailed with a cat rig with a furling mast without a boom. A carbon boom keeps the sheet at the right angle when sailing downwind. Cost: 400 hours of labour and 4,000 euros in materials.

For his second round-the-world trip, Quenet completely modified the boat in his garage. He lengthened it by a whole 20 centimetres and invested 6,000 euros this time. He greatly reduced the surface area of the hatches for better insulation against the cold and heat - important for the northern route he now wanted to tackle. He also installed an internal tiller with autopilot for harbour entrances and when passing ships, powered by a 110Ah gel battery. For the second tour, he also opted for a smaller sail. The fixed keel ballast gave way to two lifting keels with 60-kilogram bombs, combined with a retractable rudder. This makes the boat easier to trailer and reduces the draught near the coast. "I would build the same boat again with the same resources," he says of his design. "With a little more budget, I would only change a few small things."

To the far north for a change

In June 2024, Quenet will set off on his second circumnavigation of the globe - This time on a more northerly route through Canada and into the high latitudes. After stopovers in Cape Verde and Martinique, Quenet sailed from Saint-Martin to the French archipelago of Saint Pierre and Miquelon south of Newfoundland in 39 days.

Then the biggest challenge of this stage begins: The ascent up the St Lawrence River to Quebec City - without an engine, just battling the wind and current. "We travelled almost all the way up the St. Lawrence River with Baluchon, which wasn't planned at the beginning; we had a bit of trouble... I still can't believe we're here in Québec. It took two months to go up the river, which is not very glorious, but hey, we don't have an engine." The entrance to the Saguenay River is particularly dramatic: "The Saguenay is a big river, over 100 kilometres long and very deep. At low tide, all the water flows into the St Lawrence River. This creates some pretty impressive current effects, so I had to really pinch my arse cheeks together."

The Québécois welcome the friendly Frenchman with open arms. "It's rare to see someone who barely has room to turn round in his boat," marvelled a helper on the quayside. The scouts of Greater Montreal even gave him a car - "Louise", a minivan that he can now use to transport "Baluchon" around Canada on a trailer. In the summer, his microsailer is due to be launched in Vancouver, then he plans to finally make his way to Australia via Mexico and Polynesia. Perhaps he will be back home in his native Brittany in about three or four years. There will certainly be no boredom until then.