Solo Sailor

In the early 1960s in a small French village close to Angers on the Loire River a young girl is introduced to sailing by her father or, as she says, he was putting sea water into her blood. Yannick Le Nenaon little realized how much this would impact on her life and that a few years later she would become just the fourth woman in the world to sail solo around it. First, though, she became a teacher as a means to an end.

"I needed a boat and I thought I needed a man so I found an Englishman whose boat was in the Caribbean. I flew there and sailed back to the Mediterranean with him. It was my first ocean passage and I learned celestial navigation."

She kept on sailing 'here and there' and by 1975 had saved enough money to buy her own boat, minus the man because the yacht was more important. She found a Nicholson 32-footer in Belgium.

"I called her Jonathan, from Jonathan Livingston Seagull which represents freedom and that was a good symbol for my life. She was of very classical design, one of the first fibreglass boats built, and fulfilled my requirements for a long keel and with the rudder and mast attached to it."

Her father and a friend helped her sail to Barbados and from there she was on her own. She did passenger charters to get cash and started single-handed runs from bay to bay. Her first longer passage was to Panama after which she sailed for 43 days to reach The Marquesas where she stopped for a year to teach French, history and geography, again as a means to make money to continue sailing. After that it was the 'downhill run to Papeete' which included visiting the uninhabited Suvarov Atoll and in Tahiti she decided to deviate from accepted practice.

"Instead of going to Samoa, Tonga or Fiji I went to Tuvalu and Kiribati for three months then the Marshall Islands for another three months before going to Japan."

The trip to Japan was cold compared to the tropics and the winds were 'all over the place'. When they arrived Jonathan had a major overhaul which included fitting an engine for the first time.Yannick had hoped 'Mr Yamaha' would gift it but, no, she had to buy it. She spent a year sailing on the inland sea close to Hiroshima before setting off again for New Caledonia where she stayed for six months.

From New Caledonia she headed north through Torres Strait to Papua New Guinea, across the Indian Ocean to Mauritius, on to Durban, around the Cape of Good Hope and up the Atlantic to Martinique. And it was here, finally, she not only had Jonathan she also acquired Henry, the man who became her husband and the father to her son, Noah. Jonathan was sold as the family set sail for New Zealand in Henry's yacht, arriving in Opua in 1986. They settled, and have remained, in Kerikeri.

To landlubbers, indeed even to yachties, what YannickWakelam achieved is sensational yet she speaks of her achievements like they're the most natural thing, underplaying the vast distances of open ocean she covered and the fortitude required to do it. She says she was following the seasons and 'island hopping' as though it's something everyone does. Occasionally, though, she offers more insight.

"To go a short distance or a long one is the same and the moment you pull your anchor you have your life in your hands.

"You have been depending on your sextant and you expect to find an island and there it is, a little thing that grows when you approach it. You are Christopher Columbus again!

"And at sea you don't have strong smells and when you arrive in The Marquesas (for
example) the frangipani is so strong it can get you drunk!"

She has sailed the Bay of Islands too, in a small 'bathtub' but last year because of poor health she had to give that up. Now every day excitement lies in her garden and rest in her thoughts.

"Whatever you do in life the spirit is with you. I see the pearl of life in the seeds that sprout in the garden. I realize that when I started sailing you can get into the moment and that's what I was looking for. Now I do Vaipassana meditation and can sit crosslegged and go there and don't need to get wet."