Ocean Racing Magazine - #2 - April & May 2007 - (Page 58)

PORTRAIT A CERTIFIED NON-CONFORMIST WITH OR WITHOUT HIS SUCCESSES, the idea of adopting the attitude of some sort of Manitou in an ivory tower thinking about things that are beyond the sphere of ordinary mortals. He is said by some to be an old revolutionary student, sometimes disconcerting, always brilliant – you are bound to accumulate a list of descriptions, when you have been in the business for four decades, with in particular some famous strokes of genius. His fight for small boats and the democratisation of sailing is well known, as is his taste for innovation, but less is known about his love of oriental philosophy and humanism… An informal chat looking out over the Morbihan Gulf nevertheless allowed us to get a bit closer to the man that launched 30,000 ships, and who designed the last four winners of the Vendée Globe. "I was born in Epinal in the Vosges in Eastern France… and when I was young, when the coast was liberated after the war, we often went for a trip to the seaside. As a child, that made me dream, right up until I was fed up on dry land and decided it was time to go out on the water. I went to the Glénans sailing school in 1959, and at that time it was the only place you could really sail. I went through every job, of course and spent 7 or 8 years there, going from trainee to looking after the equipment, from captain to head of the centre, and ended up as Head of the Islands. You start off as a crewman, then you become a skipper and then you notice hat the boat hasn’t been maintained, as you would like, so you start working on the boats… In the end, you notice that the boat hasn’t been designed as you like, so one morning, you draw a boat and that’s how it starts…" Jean-Marie soon joined GCL (Groupe des Croiseurs Légers), founded by Alain Maupas in the sixties, the group, which created the whole movement of racing cruisers for amateurs. The boats measured around 6.50 metres, the solutions were pragmatic and accessible, and the search for performance was ongoing. As for the question as to whether the young man turned professional at that ©M. Lavaud With an exceptional career spanning almost forty years, an unrivalled list of successes and a solid reputation as a free thinker, Jean-Marie Finot is certainly one of the great figures of the French sailing scene. point … "I have never been a professional, he replies. I began studying science, then moved off to architecture. At the same time, I worked with Philippe Harlé, whom I had got to know on the Glénans, and had just set up his own firm. Then, when I got married, I stopped drawing boats… but a few friends kept asking me questions," and one thing led to another with my answers becoming designs. " I designed the Rebelle, for a club, then there was the Ecume de Mer, which should have been my final boat." Quite the opposite was true, as it was thanks to her that everything took off. Jean-Marie decided to build two models of the boat, one for himself and one for one of his friends, with the aim of The “Ecume” and what lay in her wake ©D.R.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Ocean Racing Magazine - #2 - April & May 2007

Contents
What they said
News
Portfolio
Report
Records
America's Cup
Sponsoring
Ocean Planet
Class 40
Imoca
New products
Launch
Lab
Portrait
Practical tips
Profession
Mini Class
Design
Thirty years on
New launches
Equipment
Chronicle

Ocean Racing Magazine - #2 - April & May 2007

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