Obit from the NYT
She
Rode the Waves, and Broke Barriers
Boston — After all the risks she took at sea, Florence Arthaud died on Monday
in an
accident far from any ocean: a
collision between two helicopters in
Argentina that also killed nine others, including the French Olympic
swimming champion Camille Muffat.
They were filming a new French reality show titled “Dropped” for the
leading French network TF1 in which small teams of celebrities were to be
transported by helicopters into an isolated area without
food or maps and
asked to return to home base without assistance.
But what was supposed to be a vehicle for entertainment turned instead
into tragedy.
Arthaud, who died at the age of 57, was once the most popular sports
figure in
France: quite an achievement for a diminutive female sailor in a
country with no shortage of soccer, rugby, basketball and tennis stars.
But competitive sailing, particularly solo sailing, has long tapped into
something deeply embedded in the French psyche.
“I think the French like solitary heroes: adventurers, travelers,” another
French female sailor, Isabelle Autissier, once said. “It’s quite a part of our
culture with colonialism, the exploration of America and all the rest. I think
our culture is more oriented toward the individual exploit, while the AngloSaxons
have a culture that’s more oriented toward collective accomplishment.
We seem to have trouble getting organized as a group.”
In 1990, when Arthaud became the first woman to win the single*handed
trans*Atlantic
race, the
Route du Rhum, she triumphed not only over nature but also over the preconception that only
men were equipped to handle the
rigors of such an event.
She was nicknamed La Petite Fiancée de l’Atlantique (the little fiancée of
the Atlantic) and became a star and a symbol: a magnet for both the paparazzi
and for pop philosophers who wanted to analyze her social significance at
length.
Her
family, which had founded the publishing house Arthaud, had deep
literary roots, after all, and it seemed fitting that the publishing house, run by
her father, Jacques, was drawn to grand tales of adventure.
But Florence Arthaud, the family’s most prominent adventurer, struggled
to convert her victory in the
Route du Rhum into more sailing success.
Economic setbacks in
France in the early 1990s made it difficult to find
sponsors. So, over time, did her tempestuous character.
“Florence was someone extraordinary on the
water but uncontrollable on
land, and that worked against her,” Autissier told Le Monde. “She ate. She
drank. She smoked at a moment when the byword was ‘no limit.’ That was
without a doubt not to the taste of the sponsors. Look at today’s sailors. They
are more settled, more polished, more good boys.”
The birth of her daughter, Marie, in 1993 kept her closer to home. But
sailing in France also grew more competitive: both on the
water and in the
boardrooms where financial backing for sailing campaigns was secured.
Arthaud became increasingly a peripheral figure in the sport and was
unable to secure
funding for another Route du Rhum, not even in 2010, which
was the 20th anniversary of her victory. Nor did she take part in what has
become France’s premier solo sailing event: the Vendée Globe, a quadrennial
race around the world.
But Arthaud’s influence on other sailors, particularly other
women, was
clear, and Frenchwomen of her own generation, like Autissier and Catherine
Chabaud, and next*generation stars, like the British prodigy Ellen MacArthursoon followed her lead.
“She was passionate about the ocean and nature, and it was not
something that was meant make her look good as it is for plenty of protectorsof the
environment,” said Olivier de Kersauson, the prominent French
offshore
racer who was one of her friends and mentors, in comments to Le Figaro
on Tuesday. “She always made me laugh. She was
funny and open and she
regularly rose up from the ashes, always trying to restart her projects. She was
a magnificent and incredible person.”
Arthaud was sailing by the age of 6 and was involved in a serious car
accident at the age of 17 that initially left her in a coma and forced her to be
hospitalized for several months. When she recovered, her appetite for sailing
was even stronger and in 1978, at the age of 21, she took part in the inaugural
edition of the Route du Rhum. The youngest competitor and the only woman
in the fleet, she finished 11th and returned to compete in the race in 1982 and
1986.
During the 1986 event, she changed course to respond to the
distress
single of competitor Loïc Caradec and arrived to find his
catamaran Royal II
had capsized. There was no trace of Caradec, dead at age 38.
But that tragedy did not dissuade Arthaud from pursuing her own career
and persuading the French real estate developer Christian Garrel to finance a
state*of*the*art
trimaran, the Pierre 1er.
In August of 1990, she broke the existing
record for a single*handed
Atlantic crossing, completing the journey in just under 10 days. In November,
she won the Rhum, crossing the finish line after 14 days and just over 10 hours
despite back problems and other
health concerns.
“Calm down!” she shouted at the scrum of reporters and photographers
who were jostling to get close to her as she arrived on the
dock in
Guadeloupe.
“I really don’t think the world of sailors is a macho world,” she said. “I
think it’s a world where people respect each other for their talents.”
But her greatest escape at sea would come more than 20 years later in
October 2011 when she slipped and fell off her 10*meter yacht Argade II near
midnight while sailing alone in the
Mediterranean off
Corsica.
The yacht, with her cat aboard, continued on
autopilot without her as she
remained behind in the water without a life jacket. She did have a cellphone
and a headlamp and was able to type in her pin number and telephone hermother on land for assistance. She was rescued more than two hours after her
distress call with the help of a helicopter whose crew was able to locate her by
her telephone’s signal.
“I was not at all sure I was going to make it,” she told Le Figaro. “I’m a
survivor. The devil didn’t want me.”
Less than four years later, a helicopter ride in Argentina put an end to her
life instead of saving it.
A sad day
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