From the navigator Alain Colas to the French businessman Bernard Tapie, the Phocéa, a sailboat built for solo ocean racing and transformed into a luxury yacht, had an incredible destiny to end up sunk off the coast of Malaysia.
“I complained so much it’s sad”, confided this Sunday Bernard Tapie, after learning of the end of the ship.
The 72-meter four-masted vessel sank on Friday morning near the tourist island of Langkawi, the day after a fire devastated it, said Mohamad Zawawi Abdullah, a senior Malaysian coast guard official. Seven crew members were rescued by the emergency services. There will remain some of those ships which made sea lovers dream but whose eventful history ended in tragic circumstances.
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The navigator Alain Colas had entrusted the naval architect Michel Bigouin, designer of several of Eric Tabarly’s Pen Duicks, with the task of creating this monster in Toulon for the English Transat in 1976. Race that he finished … behind Tabarly after damage.
I discovered it in Polynesia in 1982
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Christened Club Méditerranée, the ultra-modern sailboat would have no other opportunity to experience glory in racing and found itself moored in Tahiti after Alain Colas disappeared at sea aboard the Manureva in 1978.
“I discovered it in Polynesia in 1982, rusted everywhere, it served as a mooring pontoon”, said Sunday Bernard Tapie, “fell madly in love with this ship” which he bought from the widow of Alain Colas and renamed “Phocéa”. The “mad desire” of the businessman? “To make it an extremely efficient and extremely comfortable boat” and “to beat the record” for the crossing of the Atlantic from West to East dating from 1905.
The ship is renovated and modernized by the same Michel Bigouin, its masts raised, its sails increased. In July 1988, Bernard Tapie and his crew left New York and suffered “a very strong storm: the ship went to bed twice and passed two icebergs”. But eight days later, the French coast. The record is shattered by four days.
Jet set yacht
“All my best memories, sports, human, economic, were born on this boat”, blows the former president of the Olympique de Marseille, businessman and minister. He will also use it for “seminars”. “There are a lot of people who were very happy to take a ride aboard the Phocéa,” he says.
The financial and legal troubles of the businessman led to the buyout of the ship in 1997 by the Lebanese businesswoman Mouna Ayoub.
The billionaire made it a luxury yacht to receive the global jet set, she reduced the height of the masts, increased the living space, and sold it in 2010. A few years later, an auction of more than 1,000 objects from du Phocéa will bring him 414,000 euros. Haute couture dresses sold on this occasion will bring in much more than the engraved “Phocéa” bridge bell sold for 1,400 euros.
For its fourth life, it is a tandem involving billionaire Xavier Niel and brothers Steve and Jean-Émile Rosenblum, founders of the Pixmania site, which buys the Phocéa and records it in Malta with the aim of renting it to the rich. boaters, according to Mediapart. They entrust the management to Pascal Saken, a man presenting himself as an “international businessman and investor of Vanuatu” and honorary consul of this Pacific archipelago. Papua New Guinea police will suspect him of arms and drug trafficking, local press reports.
Damaged in a storm in 2013, the Phocéa was transported to a shipyard in Phuket (Thailand) belonging to Pascal Saken, who did not hesitate to claim to be the owner of the boat he renamed “Enigma”. The Enigma had been sailing from Malaysia where she caught fire and sank. An investigation was opened to determine the causes of the fire, according to the coast guard.
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