“After having built two steel monohulls, spent a sabbatical year on the second, and with retirement approaching, I built a catamaran in aluminum, with a view to leaving for a long voyage on the oceans. It’s a Katalu 42, designed by Nicolas Gruet. It took me three and a half years to build it, working during our holidays and weekends. I had allowed five years, basing my estimate on the time it took to build my first boats, but the construction seemed to me to be easy compared to the construction of steel hulls. The boat was launched in 2011. Since then, we have been roaming around, with trips between France’s Ile d'Yeu and Ireland. There will be three of us, with my wife Marie and Clara, our daughter, joined during stopovers by our other two children and our friends. We should therefore be casting off from Brest at the end of August, with a first stopover in Madeira.
We won’t be going to either the Far North or the Far South. Our ‘Far North’ will be a trip up the Saint Lawrence to Montreal, before the Pacific. We think we will be cruising for around ten years.”
Marie, Bruno and Clara aboard Utopie
www.cata-utopie.net
