A good ship isn’t worth much without a good crew; and it is no doubt better to have a bad ship and a perfect crew than a perfect ship sailed by a bad crew. But recruiting an “adventure crew” is an entirely different affair – and a very delicate one. Not only is it necessary to find the most competent people available in a wide range of specialities (engineers, doctors, deckhands, deck officers, cooks, quartermasters and other boat hands) but one must also be certain of their deep-seated ability to confront the rigours inherent in any adventure…and that is quite another thing. And then have these 20 to 30 men and women live together 24 hours a day in a confined and somewhat austere space, for months or even years… it is a continuous challenge. You can only pull it off with a certain type of person and a set of very precise, strict and essential life rules, which have been carefully thought out to avoid confrontation and promote community spirit. In practical terms, it is better to avoid the naive optimism implicit in the collective Western imagination, which essentially sees travel as an escape from the constraints of society.

For example, the union of sun, sail, sky and sea is imagined as the supreme ideal of paradise where effort, constraints and difficulties simply disappear. Of course, real adventure, driven by a dream, a project, a goal, is an entirely different thing: there is constant pressure to achieve this goal, and consequently, an enormous amount of work and stress that is impossible imagine unless you have faced it yourself. It is a question of building – and you cannot build without effort.

In a society like ours, which produces, more than anything else, hedonistic and individualistic consumers for whom the very idea of constraint is taken as an intolerable attack on their ego, it is difficult to find individuals who are capable, not only of “embarking on an adventure”, but also living in a closed community with all the obligations of community spirit, individual sacrifice and personal discipline that it inevitably requires. Many long months are needed to select people capable of acting and thinking whilst taking into account, first and foremost, the group to which they belong and the project which binds them together, and to reject those who simply want to “consume” a journey at the least expense.

But even then you still cannot be certain that you have a real crew, ready to face the hardships, which will arise sooner or later and of which there will be no shortage, as one. By the same token, you will also need men and women who wish to share a collective ideal and who are ready to accept the sacrifices necessary to achieve that ideal. In fact, you need men and women who are more inclined to seek happiness through their participation in a common undertaking than through the enjoyment of day-to-day pleasures. And finding that is a very rare thing.

Finally, it is essential that all these headstrong, motivated people are also “red-blooded fellows” who are not afraid of the constant danger and the potential storms, or of the pirates or even the monotony of the meals. These people must know how to bear the wind and cold, the sun or the rain and even find some happiness and – why not? even a little greatness – in this harsh life which meets nature head-on. Better to have men and women with you who seek fulfilment through the hardships they overcome, than passengers of life whose main aim is to escape all inconvenience. Real adventure, once again, is not a pleasure party.

That is what differentiates it from straightforward travel. You have to be strong, both physically and mentally. That is a must. Furthermore, in a real adventure, you may know when you are leaving but you never know when you are coming back and while that may be a good thing, this type of uncertainty rarely suits the majority of people that our highly programmed era produces.

It is no surprise then that La Boudeuse is an extraordinary laboratory of human behaviour. It is a microsociety made up of men and women of all ages and all conditions, coming from all social backgrounds and all ethnic origins. Both the best and the worst can develop in a microsociety that is living in permanently confined quarters and is constantly evolving. And so it is one of the captain’s vital roles to ensure that his crew always has at least enough strength and goodwill to keep moving forward.

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