Meet Monique, for the past five years, she and Guirec Soudée have been sailing around the world. Emma Beddington reveals how the French sailor chose to brave the high seas with just one feathered shipmate
At the tip of Brittany’s wild, wet Côtes-d’Armor peninsula is the village of Plougrescant. Beyond that, butting right out into the sea, lies Yvinec island, a tiny outcrop intermittently accessible depending on tides via a rock-studded expanse of dunes and seaweed. To get there I have taken two planes, a train and a puzzling automobile. It has been an epic journey, but I can’t possibly say that to Guirec Soudée when he picks me up for the last leg in his 4x4. I may have got lost in a Brest industrial estate at midnight, unable to make the hire car headlights work, but the 26-year-old Breton sailed around the world solo for five years. During that time he was trapped in Arctic ice for 130 days, survived 15m waves, nearly capsized repeatedly, was imprisoned briefly by Canadian coastguards and became the youngest sailor to navigate the formidable Northwest Passage between the Pacific and the Atlantic solo. Well, I say solo. Sole human. He was accompanied by a chicken, a Rhode Island Red named Monique.
I said to myself, ‘If she annoys me, I can always eat her.’ It feels weird to say that now! We formed a real bond
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2DoXe1Z
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