Aboard Tara en route to the North Pole - Le Parisien - Le Parisien

last kiss girlfriend, a friendly hello to friends and family back at the dock, and that marine Tara focused on leaving the port of Lorient. Escorted by fifty boats that accompanied her first miles to the Arctic Ocean to the sound of horns, the polar schooner was first set sail Sunday afternoon to Groix, where a priest in a cassock blessed the crew.

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• IN PICTURES. North Pole expedition: the schooner Tara restarts

At the bow of the ship, Etienne Bourgois, President of Tara shipping and eldest son of Agnes B. (The boat owner), enjoys the friendly greetings and “good winds” old wolves local seafood. “This mission is the culmination of a year’s work” slips this lover of the oceans, always excited to see the boat of his mother leave her home port for a new scientific mission. This is the old sailboat Jean-Louis Etienne

A delicate maneuver to exit the port, before the former submarine base which still lie the wrecks of World War II World, Captain Loïc Vallette knows that the worst is to come. In early July, the first ice will lick the front of the boat, the day will be permanent and can already feel the fourteen crew members focused on the many tasks they have to perform on board. Oceanographers, researchers, biologists … fifty scientists and seasoned sailors will take turns seven months old sailboat Jean-Louis Etienne to take samples of plankton, measuring mercury levels and the amount of plastic waste floating on the edge of the ice.
“They remind me of the great explorers in the eighteenth century”

on Tara’s deck, while the wharves to the trimarans racing recede gradually, we imagine the boat splitting the summer ice Arctic Ocean and the crew on the lookout. Here, under the Breton drizzle and relatively calm seas, the two ma sts without difficulty splits the waves and the boat impresses with its extraordinary dimensions: 120 tons, 36 matt long, ten feet wide! But up there, at -10 ° C, snow and fog, Tara will not be a nut shell against the powerful blocks of ice that can trap the boat on the ice more surely than vice.

This Sunday, among the hundreds of onlookers came to watch the departure of the boat, many also hailed the exceptional nature of this expedition. “They remind me of the great explorers who went to discover unknown lands in the eighteenth century, says Stephen, a Parisian passage Lorient. The poles may be the only areas in the world that still have pristine adventure “fragrance. “When you see the speed at which our planet is deteriorating and how man has turned the sea into a trash can, this mission is primarily a call for help to save the oceans” observed his side Patrice.

Taking the pulse of the world

After spending an hour on board, as we have done on Sunday, the fervor of the people of Lorient is measured for this extraordinary and we can understand their enthusiasm for his mission sailboat. For going to measure the impact of man on the great white desert, as vital as the Amazon rainforest for the oxygen we breathe, it’s a bit like Tara was going to take the pulse of the planet.