Yves no stranger to strife

by Mark Price and Rebecca Fox, Otago Daily Times on 19 Feb 2008 Being in trouble off the New Zealand coast is nothing new for one of the sailors rescued yesterday from the upturned French trimaran Groupama 3.

Yves Parlier (47) spent 10 days on Stewart Island in 2001 repairing his yacht, Aquitaine Innovations, after it was dismasted in the Southern Ocean while leading the Vendee Globe single-handed race around the world.

Parlier, not long recovered from a parapenting crash in which he broke both legs, had calmly emailed race organisers from south of Cape Horn: ‘‘Technical problems. No need for assistance and skipper in fine health.’’

Parlier sailed 4000km under jury-rig to reach Stewart Island, where he set about erecting an 18m, 180kg replacement mast on his own, race rules disallowing any assistance. He rejoined the race but, running short of food, was forced to eat seaweed and flying fish that landed on his boat.

Although Parlier finished a month after Briton Ellen MacArthur, he received a hero’s welcome back in France after 127 days at sea.

The sailor has also been said by the media in Europe to be jinxed. In the same race eight years earlier, he was dismasted soon after the start, while in another he hit an iceberg.

In April 2005, he fell 12m and broke three vertebrae sailing his 18m catamaran in a 24-hour distance record attempt. A year later, he broke the record in the same yacht with a distance of 597.81 nautical miles.

Today, shipwrecked in Dunedin, he and other members of the trimaran’s crew will begin preparing for the event next year.

From the online edition of the Otago Daily Times, published in Dunedin, NZL www.odt.co.nz