By Noah Davis

(Bloomberg) — Loïck Peyron will spend the following month crossing the Atlantic Ocean, one thing he has executed a number of instances earlier than. But this time, he won’t ever be precisely positive of his place. He’ll rely solely on the identical gadgets that sailors lots of of years in the past used to steer their ships.

The 56-year-old French crusing legend wouldn’t have it every other approach.

“I’m looking forward to the beauty of the uncertainty,” he mentioned throughout a Friday night Skype name. “Not knowing exactly where you are in the middle of the sea is something I want to feel again.”

Peyron might be crusing alongside within the Transat, the oldest solo ocean race on this planet, which begins Monday. He’s gained the competitors 3 times, in 1992, 1996, and 2008, the final time the Transat occurred. This 12 months’s winner, who might be crusing in one of many race’s large, $9 million-plus trimarans, which may attain speeds of fifty knots, will seemingly cowl the three,000 miles of open ocean from the south coast of England to New York City in not more than eight days. Peyron, who at present holds the Jules Verne Trophy given to the quickest circumnavigation of the world by any kind of yacht, won’t be that winner.

Rather than sail in an ultrafast ship, the Frenchman opted to race Pen Duïck II, the identical yacht his countryman Eric Tabarly used to win the race in 1964. That victory stays essential greater than 50 years later. “Everything in French sailing starts in 1964,” Peyron mentioned. “I wanted to do to this as a tribute, as an homage, to [Tabarly].”

The skipper plans to navigate the historic approach, too, utilizing a sextant that’s custom-built for the journey by the final particular person in France making the gadgets. He gained’t have a contemporary GPS monitoring system, relying as an alternative on charts and a “little Casio-style calculator to calculate my position based on the sun or the stars,” he mentioned. While Peyron will use a barometer to measure stress modifications in anticipation of adjusting climate, he’ll lack any forecasting system that’s linked to the mainland through radio or Internet. For probably the most half, he’ll be fully alone, a speck working his approach west.

The lack of recent expertise presents some hazard. Ice and fog are the principle points sailors face, and he’ll be unaware of what’s forward. But in different methods, Pen Duïck II is safer than the trendy racing vessels. The slower pace permits extra time for Peyron to react to something in his approach, and there are fewer fragile devices that may break. In a nod to security, he could have an Automatic Identification System to keep away from different vessels, as site visitors within the North Atlantic has dramatically elevated because the first event of the race. For probably the most half, nonetheless, will probably be Peyron, his ability, his wits, and his boat towards the ocean, simply because it was when he first soloed throughout the Atlantic at 19.

It gained’t be a speedy voyage in Pen Duïck II. Although the ship was an engineering masterpiece 50 years in the past—each longer (greater than 40 ft) and lighter (resulting from its plywood building) than the opposite boats—it’s now generations previous its aggressive prime. Peyron hopes to beat the legendary Tabarly’s time from 1964: 27 days, 3 hours, 56 minutes. By comparability, it took Peyron himself 12 days, 8 hours, and 45 minutes to sail from Plymouth to Boston when he gained on this identical race in 2008. (His greatest Transat time got here in 1996 when he crossed from Plymouth to Newport Rhode Island in 10 days, 10 hours, and 5 minutes.)

Peyron has a plan for the downtime: He hopes to make amends for his studying. In a typical race, he doesn’t have time for books; the boats are too quick and require fixed consideration. Alone in the midst of the ocean on the Pen Duïck II, he expects to have hours to kill, and he packed accordingly. “I brought everything,” he mentioned. “I have to finish a book about Keith Richards that my son gave to me. I have another one on Winston Churchill. I have some sailing adventures about the 16th century. And a lot of [Joseph] Conrad. I love Conrad.”

Peyron’s Transat quest isn’t fairly a Conrad novel. It is an journey, one designed to honor crusing’s wealthy historical past whereas drawing consideration to the current and what’s coming quickly. “It’s nice to have one foot in the future and one foot in the past,” Peyron mentioned.

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