Sandrine Pierrefeu is a writer and ship captain. She gives us here the chronicles of her first command in the Arctic. Her account takes us to areas where few sailing ships have keeled. Do you know Jan Mayen Island? No, I've never been to Jan Mayen Island. Neither the east coast of Greenland nor the fjords of northwest Iceland
At the helm of the Aurora, a charter yacht, Sandrine and her colourful crew make their way through a world of ice. Sumptuous anchorages where glaciers calve, improbable swims in mountain lakes, multilingual encounters with the Inuit, their dogs and their guns. The sound immersion bewitches the reader: the squealing of the brash against the ship's hull, the cracking of icebergs, the explosions of glaciers, various gurgling noises and trickling water. The author even manages to make us feel the smell of ice and the bite of cold while sailing.
In these areas the cartography is incomplete, the nautical instructions are based on observations dating back nearly a century, when they exist. Sandrine first follows the GPS track recorded by her owner during previous expeditions. Then she gets bolder, crosschecks the information left around 1937 by the explorer Paul-Émile Victor with official documents and discovers not without difficulty new anchorages.
I won't tell you about the whales, seals and puffins, nor about the invisible but ubiquitous polar bear, nor about the pronunciation of the Inuit language, nor about the welcome of Jan Mayen's scientists. Now it's your turn to dive into this Arctic adventure, nice and warm in your bunk. And I assure you, this is no gossip..
For my part, I only dream of one thing: leaving 66th North!
Partir 66e Nord Chronicle of an apprentice captain - Sandrine Pierrefeu
- Editions Glénat
- 165 pages
- 14 x 22,5 cm
- 15.95 euros
