A slide show and cockpit chat at the Rye Library

22 May 2005 @ 16:00

with Bertrand de Frondeville, Cdr. FNR

Piannissimo off Bequia in 2000

At age 11, as a Navy brat in Casablanca , Bertrand read Annie VanderWielde’s “Penelope etait du Voyage”, her own tale as the first couple to sail around the world, followed by Slocum’s log. This triggered a series of recurrent dreams, in which he was doing his own circumnavigation, picking up the thread night after night for several enchanted years.

Through his father’s assignments in Paris and Saigon , the dream wove in and out of his life, more insistent as he circled the world as a French naval cadet with a math and science MS degree on the training cruiser Jeanne d’Arc. While completing his studies with an MS in naval architecture, then a nuclear engineering MS at UC Berkeley, he managed to learn to sail with naval friends. He then taught at the international Glenans Center off the coast of Brittany , but his preferred student was the golden Californian coed in Berkeley who became his wife, Barbara, and whom he took to France for 7 years.

His naval duties completed, he came to the US, started a sea scout ship and a sailing school in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass, before he moved to Rye , driven by a diverse career in shipping, consulting and banking. The French nuclear, missile launching submarine he helped design and build as quality assurance manager, was retired after 30+ years of reliable service, the very year (Jun1999-Jun2000) he sailed from the American Yacht Club in Rye. Free at last to live his dream, if not around the world, at least around the Atlantic , to Africa and back, up and down the Caribbean , for a year “sabbaticruise”.

He had bought and patiently upgraded for offshore an old American classic boat, built in the Catskills in 1976 and a sister ship of the first fiberglass/plastic boat to sail around the world. Pianissimo is a very seaworthy small ketch with two masts, 25.5 ft at the waterline and 31.5’ overall, short but spacious and heavy, ready for just about anything, whether solo or with another skipper as offshore crew, or family and friends “in the islands”.

Back in Rye , Bertrand still does substitute teaching at the high school level. He has been adjunct professor of international business operations at Pace University ’s graduate business school, and has taught sailing on charter boats in the Caribbean . He advises industry and government on financial, commercial, technical, environmental and ethics risks. He works on local city or school budget committees, and still sails the US east coast on Pianissimo, when he is not helping friends sail their yachts in their offshore crossings, in the Med or the Atlantic .

Bertrand will take us with slides through his voyage, sharing the awe and glory of days after days at sea. Or in islands of many faces, where people from ashore or the blue water cruising crowd bring forth each day new and old friendships to be treasured for ever.

Bertrand has a message for all of us, which is not just about sailing...

Stop dreaming about it:

JUST DO IT!