February 2014

Hello everyone,

Our boats' hulls are pretty vain : they regularly ask for beauty treatments, which bear the pretty nautical name of « careening » ; careening doesn't consist in giving aerodynamic shapes , but simply in cleaning thoroughly a boat's hull(s) to remove all traces of algae, shellfish and other strange creatures that tend to cling to them ; some tropical lagoons are particularly conducive to this growth, and the boat, if we are not careful , in a few months dresses up in a curious mantle of algae in which teem millions of animalcules which resemble small shrimp.

The shallow draft of Banana Split (like my two previous boats) and the solidity of its construction allow me to beach the boat to comply to this ritual. Finding on our route a small desert island I know well, especially a soft bed of sand as fine as flour, I beached the catamaran, and I waited for the tide to uncover a part of the hulls : a few hours of brushing later, they were quite clean.

'In other parts of the world where there are no sufficient tides , one is required to use a shipyard , and my three successive boats have experienced a few picturesque ones : my schooner Om's first careening was done in 1975 in Abidjan, at Carena shipyard, and the memories that I keep of it are quite picturesque ; I also remember a shipyard in Port Douglas , Queensland , Australia, where I was fascinated to the first time by the power of Kärcher , which instantly chased any dirt ; in the same area, I happened to beach my schooner Om on a deserted beach ... and I only learned years later that the place was frequented by saltwater crocodiles , and as an Australian told me « If a crocodile sees you, he eats you! »

My second boat , the little sloop Voyage , loved to res on the deserted beach of an island in the Bay of Salvador in Brazil, or on a sandbar in the Bahamas. Its most extraordinary careening took place as I was motoring up the Intracoastal Waterway, an inland waterway along the east coast of the United States : I had beached the boat at a bend in channel's meanders, in the middle of nowhere... and a Coast Guard helicopter landed next to me , they thought I was in trouble ... I did not dare suggest them to help me scrub the hull.

Haulouts in yards are less picturesque but sometimes the only solution , I 'm lucky if a local worker , a friend or a passing vagabond just help me scrape and repaint these surfaces that seem huge when the boat leaves the water ; in the technical area of Noumea the son of a sailing friend, Malo Leseigneur, came to help me ; since then he has become champion of France on Laser ... another kind of navigation !

Today, for a few weeks , Banana Split's hulls are all smooth and clean and I 've already forgotten the hours spent scraping algae hours chasing the strange critters that live in hem , and who sought to prick me or settle in the pit of my ears and in my hair, making me a true Shrimp Captain.

I wish you a Festive February

Antoine