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20 years have passed, but this photo of Fujifilm II taken by Gilles Martin-Raget is always so exciting. This is the Orma 60 Fujifilm Loick Peyron, in a storm near Ouessant (Brittany) during the Course des Phares in 2002. A photo that made the history of sailing.

During the Course des Phares 2002, the Orma 60 trimaran Fujifilm II skipper Loic Peyron, is sailing through a very special piece of water located south of Ushant Island (west tip of Britanny, France) named “The devil’s hole”. There, the tide current coming out of the Channel hit the north Atlantic swell going the opposite direction in very shallow waters.

The combination of these natural elements creates instant pyramidal waves like the ones that can be seen at the mouth of a river. The wind was not blowing more than 25 knots, and the basic swell was about 2 m. The helicopter pilot Daniel Manoury who, at that time, was regularly coming here for shooting storms said after landing: “Today the weather was nice. Sometimes, in winter, during storms, this place really gives you an idea what the inferno is”.

Fujifilm II happened to pass safely the difficulty and won the race organized by Royale Production, the organization I was shooting for at the time. Unfortunately, Fujifilm II was destructed by a storm a few months later during the Route du Rhum 2002. Another story behind this photo is that it was taken with a digital camera, one of the real first good ones (35 mm slides were still the standard at that time).

The jpg original file is 2,70 mb only, and, after a necessary reduction in size and weight, it was sent through the internet a few minutes later, after the helicopter had landed on a beach nearby, with one of those external modems that was much noisier than anything else, certainly not quick! But it worked, and it was probably the beginning of a new era, though it took another 3 years to abandon definitively the slides and shoot with digital cameras only.

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Gilles Martin-Raget bio

Discover more about Gilles Martin-Raget… in his own words!

My personal story started in Arles, south of France, April 9th 1955, a city full of incredible roman historical vestiges and now famous for its photo festival, located right in the heart of Provence, between Camargue and Alpilles landscapes, a nice little town full of historical culture, traditions and art de vivre.

I lived there for 19 years, eventually doing my photography debuts followed by the inevitable sessions in dark rooms to process B&W films. I then moved to Montpellier, then Aix en Provence for vague economic university purposes, a period who I more certainly start to discover the sea and the wonderfull hobby of sailing, followed by its next stop: yacht racing.
 
As journalism always was something of interest for me, I started to work for yachting magazines, reporting about the races I was participating in. Speaking about milestones, the very first photo I had the pleasure to publish was illustrating a story written by a lovely young female journalist whose name was Maguelonne Turcat. She eventually became my wife – hopefully still is!… –  and we had 3 sons together. As she was form Marseille, we settled in Marseille, no choice, and are still living there in the lovely neighborhood of Endoume.

On the nautical side, I mainly sailed in the Mediterranean sea, aboard large racing and cruising monohulls, including maxi yachts, eventually reached the required level to be part of an America’s Cup Challenger trials crew onboard France III at Newport (RI) in 1983 with Bruno Troublé as skipper.
 The French team was eliminated at the early stages of the trials, but I stayed in Newport to cover the historical win of Australia II, working for several sailing magazines. After another short campaign with “Challenge France” in Fremantle, Western Australia in 1986, it was time to become full time yachting journalist and marine photographer.

The America’s Cup being not only a  fantastic feature but also an unescapable  addiction, I’ve been covering since then  every single edition, working for numerous  top media organizations like AFP, L’Equipe and Liberation, then as Team  photographer, including Oracle in 2007 in  Valencia, 2010 with the incredible giant  Trimaran winning affair, and finally as  photo manager and principal photographer for the San Francisco big wing rigged foiling catamarans 2013 edition.

I am now lucky enough (yes, there is also an ugly amount of work involved)  to be a regular contributor to most of the prominent sailing magazines throughout the world, the author of numerous books on sailing and sailors, official photographer for many top racing sailors or sailing teams, internationally known sponsors and race organizers. That also means a lot of travel to cover the greatest sailing events, do reports on most spectacular cruising destinations and sail onboard the most diverse yachts. As you can imagine, I love my job! 

Gilles Martin-Raget Official website is here!

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Some of the world’s greatest yacht racing photographers gathered in Paris last week for the Mirabaud Yacht Racing Image award prize giving. Among them, French photographer Loïc Venance, winner of the main award thanks to his picture of french sailor Jeremie Beyou in the Vendée Globe, and Patrick Condy (UK), winner of the Public Award.

No less than 126 photographers spanning 24 nationalities participated in the 13th edition of the Mirabaud Yacht Racing Image Award. Their photos illustrate the sailing season’s highlights, including the Vendée Globe, the Olympic Games and the America’s Cup, as well as SailGP and other more popular events such as the Fastnet race, Voiles de Saint-Tropez, Mini Transat and sailing regattas all over the world.

Born in Paris in 1975, Loïc Venance studied photography at the Ecole de l’Image (Gobelins). He joined Agence France Presse (AFP) in 2001 and covered numerous subjects in France and abroad, including Lybia, Bolivia and Thailand. Venance started to work in sailing in 2016, covering offshore races such as the Vendée Globe, Route du Rhum or Transat Jacques Vabre.

“I am very happy to have won this prize, which is clearly an international reference in sailing photography, and to have my photo chosen among so many high-quality images,” said Loïc Venance.

Our friend Martina Orsini is this year’s runner-up, ahead of another « legend » of yacht racing photography, Daniel Forster (SUI). 

The Public Award, based on the number of public votes cast on the internet, was won by Patrick Condy from the UK with an image of Alex Thomson’s Hugo Boss rounding the Fastnet Rock. Condy leads two Hungarian photographers: Brigi Török and Jóka Gémesi. 

“It is an amazing honor to have won the Public award in such a prestigious competition”, said Patrick Condy. “This award is something all marine photographers aspire to win and it is great to see it going strong in what has been a difficult year for us all. I would like to thank Alex and the team at Alex Thomson Racing for giving me the opportunity to be on board for this moment.”

The Mirabaud Yacht Racing Image award 2021 has once again been a huge popular success, with approximately 15,000 votes on social media and more than 250,000 page views.

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Supermodel Candice Swanepoel took to Instagram on Monday to promote new pieces from her eco-lifestyle brand Tropic Of C. The 33-year-old model – who used to work for Victoria’s Secret – posed on a sailboat while flexing very toned body in a black-and-white bikini that made the most of her impressive 5ft10in frame. 

‘Sail away with me,’ wrote Swanepoel, who launched the line in 2018, in a hashtag in her caption.

Read more here.

Who is Candice Swanepoel

Candice Susan Swanepoel is a South African supermodel. She is known for her work with Victoria’s Secret. She became a Victoria’s Secret Angel in 2010 and is still contracted with the brand. In 2016, she was listed 8th on the Forbes top-earning models list.

Swanepoel is fluent in Afrikaans, English, and Portuguese, the last of which she learned from her longtime ex-boyfriend, Hermann Nicoli, a Brazilian model. They began dating after they met in Paris when she was 17 and he was 23. In August 2015, the couple announced their engagement. They have two sons together. The couple split up in November 2018.

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Infographic created by cruisingoutpost.com

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We are living in a weird situation, staying at home behind our fences to protect ourselves from an invisible enemy. And what’s the thing we miss the most? Breathe, walk, run, explore, travel and… be on the sea of course!

Never as today before we would love to be on a boat and let it sail over the seas, reaching wonderful places, maybe far from our comfort zone. That’s why in this episode of my blog I decided to show you this picture taken by the British photographer Rick Tomlinson. In this period of physical inactivity, I spend a lot of time dreaming experiences that I absolutely want to do once in my life.

I was scrolling the Facebook homepage when this beautiful picture captured my attention. Fortunately Rick Tomlinson is getting out all his archive so some analogical pearls like this one can be shared. This is an expedition that all the sailing photographers with an adventurous soul want to tell by images. Daily light, cold colors, sinuous and uncommon shapes of landscape… and silence!

Could you image it? The picture portrays Skip Novak’s first ‘Pelagic’ yacht photographed by a large iceberg in Fournier Bay, Antarctica, and it was taken on Fuji Provia 100 ISO  slide film in 1992 with a Nikon F4 and 20mm lens with a graduated grey filter.

“We had noticed this beautiful iceberg with a sine wave like profile and set about trying to capture its size and shape using Pelagic to show its scale.  I was dropped off in a small inflatable dinghy while Skip took Pelagic in closer to the berg. The lines on the ice draw your eye to the boat. These lines are actually previous water lines and the iceberg has rotated as it melts and erodes. You don’t want to hang around to close to a berg like this as they can be very unstable and can brake or rotate at any time”, Rick Tomlinson said.

Keep on dreaming! Stay safe, stay at home and travel with the imagination! We will have time later to do what we want!

Rick Tomlinson Biography

At the Legends event in 2011 Volvo presented Rick Tomlinson with the Pioneer of Onboard Media award, but Rick Tomlinson started his career as a boat builder and sailor racing the Whitbread onboard Drum, The Card, Intrum Justitia and Team EF.  

His first pictures from Drum where published in Yachting World and Seahorse,(circulation 50,000) his final race on Team EF was an assignment for National Geographic (circulation 10 million).  Rick has twice been the Official Photographer for the Volvo Ocean Race and twice worked as a Team Photographer the most recent with Team SCA.  

Rick Tomlinson is part of the elite group of specialist yachting photographers covering the worlds major sailing events, from the Olympics to the Americas Cup, and undertaking assignments for magazines and the top boat yards.

Click to discover Rick Tomlinson official website.

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