Nutshell

Our excellent friend, Maurice Martin, the apostle of tourism and sports, responding the other day to our New Year wishes, also gave us some advice.
He told us in substance:
"How come, in a yachting center like Arcachon, you who are a former sportsman, did you not say anything about the crossing of the Atlantic by Alain Gerbault, alone on his yacht? It is a fascinating subject for most of your readers who also have small boats and who live from the sea, by the sea or on the sea?"

Maurice Martin is a wise and perceptive man.
We feel good about following his advice. Also, for the sum of 7 fr. 50, we bought the new book in which Alain Gerbault gives an account of his exploit and which is called "Alone across the Atlantic." (Bernard Grasset, publisher in Paris).
This moral and financial sacrifice bore witness all the more to our deep friendship, our devotion to Maurice Martin since (need I say it?) the performance in question had left us not incredulous - that would be nothing - but indifferent.
Incredulity, in fact, does not prevent one from inquiring and, once information has been obtained, doubts sometimes disappear. Indifference, on the contrary, translates into a refusal to know. It is the worst of scourges. For someone who has merit to assert, a doctrine to make known, the indifferent is not of this world. It is zero: nothingness.
Well! let us confess completely: We who, in our Maxims and Thoughts have written against indifference, were the first to practice it in this case. We knew of the raid across the Ocean only what it was impossible not to know about it, so much noise had it made. And the little we knew about it, while leaving us cold, made us say:
- Another joker, probably who buys glory cheaply by setting up, with his little yacht, an immense boat. For jokes like that, the newspapers work. But if it were a question of doing justice to a shy and sincere man of genius, they would burn the mailbox!

The fact is that, even today, after making inquiries, I must admit, that at first glance, one could doubt especially here. The list of shipwrecks at the entrance to the Arcachon basin is so long that the maritime administration recently refused to communicate it to us. It would be frightening, we were assured.

And now a former student, a recent amateur sailor, would have crossed the Ocean on a nutshell! Because what do you call, for such a voyage, an eleven-meter racing yacht (nine at the waterline) with which many would refuse to engage here in our famous passes? ---to be continued

Albert de RICAUDY.