French sailor · Multiple round-the-world records · Author
b. 1944 · Jules Verne Trophy holder 1997 & 2004
“The sea is my memory. Memories fade, but it remains, unchanging.”
Olivier de Kersauson, interviews · Le Monde de Kersauson.
Geronimo
Olivier de Kersauson is the philosopher-king of modern French ocean sailing. He sailed as Éric Tabarly's tactician aboard Pen Duick VI in the early 1970s and has held the Jules Verne Trophy (fastest crewed circumnavigation under sail) twice — in 1997 aboard Sport-Elec, and in 2004 aboard Geronimo. He held the singlehanded round-the-world record at one point. He is the author of more than fifteen books on the sea, and one of the most-quoted French commentators on the maritime world.
Kersauson's contribution to ocean culture has been less institutional than cultural. He has used his books, his television presence and his commentary to keep the long-distance sailing tradition in French popular consciousness. He is among the founding voices of the Vendée Globe and Route du Rhum eras, both of which have produced a generation of French sailing engineering (VPLP among them).
Sport-Elec — 26.5 m trimaran, 71-day Jules Verne Trophy circumnavigation, 1997. Geronimo — 33.8 m trimaran (Cap Gemini-Schneider Electric), Jules Verne Trophy holder, 2004. Pen Duick VI (with Tabarly).
VPLP — Wind Voyage's design partner — is the direct technical descendant of the French long-distance multihull and trimaran tradition Kersauson lived inside. The vocabulary of foiling, of wing rigs, of automated sail control all came out of that world. Wind Voyage owes its rig credibility to it.
If ocean voyaging is something you’d like to pursue, we have developed a way to do it using wind and solar power out of our respect for the oceans.
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