JOLIE BRISE translates to "Beautiful Breeze" in French...
Here's JOLIE BRISE at the start of an early Fastnet Race in the late 1920's. This photo is framed in my office and was taken by Frank Beken, famous marine photographer in Cowes, Isle of Wight. Here's Frank Beken behind his self-made camera. Note the camera is fired by Frank biting down on a ball in his mouth, which was connected to the trigger.
I'd never seen JOLIE BRISE, but knew of her since I was a kid through the writings of Alf Loomis and other scribes in Yachting Magazine. Although JOLIE BRISE was based in Europe, from afar, partly due to Frank Beken's photos, I developed an impressionable child's worship of JOLIE BRISE's speed, impossibly long tiller, bowsprit, and 2,500 square feet of working sail.
Little did I dream that one day I would be in Cowes and smell the coal smoke, salt air, peat, and low tide shoreline all mixed into one memorable olfactory sensation.
In Cowes for the 1971 Fastnet on IMPROBABLE, I met Keith Beken, Frank's son, and proprietor of Beken pharmacy (chemist) and marine photography, one block inland from the bustling summer waterfront. I entered Beken of Cowes on a race lay day, and explained to Keith Beken I was in town from California for the Admiral's Cup and Fastnet Race, and looking for early photos of the 1928 J-Class yacht CAMBRIA, William Fife's "masterpiece", which some friends were restoring in the Canary Islands.
Keith kindly invited me upstairs to the attic collection of old photos, literally thousands of prints, and turned me loose. I found many old photos I wanted to buy: not only of CAMBRIA, but of the Herreshoff schooner WESTWARD.
http://www.yachtcambria.com/galleries.php?gallery=Yacht
And of course the photos above of JOLIE BRISE. I bought about 10 black and white prints from Keith Beken, for a pound sterling each (~$2.40) and have them to this day.
8 years later, in 1979, I again returned to Cowes for the Admirals Cup and Fastnet Race, this time on IMP, the 39 footer in which we had won the Fastnet Race in 1977. 1979 was the year of the infamous Fastnet Storm ("Fastnet Force 10") in which dozens of boats were rolled, many abandoned, and 18 sailors died.
IMP, small as she was, safely weathered the worst of the conditions, much of it under triple reefed main. The wind, strong as it was (we had no wind speed instrumentation) was not the primary concern. It was the large breaking seas, some of which I estimated at 30-50 feet.
For about 8 hours aboard IMP we were in survival mode: All crew, 8 total, below decks except for two: the helmsman looking forward and the backup calling the approaching swells. IMP is tiller steered, and the helmsman was instructed not to break the steering with any sharp movements of the tiller. We negotiated the most dangerous seas by sailing on a beam to broad reach and actively steering to avoid what we could see.
Arriving safely at the Fastnet Race finish aboard IMP, since our only radio was a VHF as required by the race rules, we were not aware of the largest air/sea rescue since Dunkirk and loss of life. And were astounded to discover IMP, indeed the entire 3 boat U.S Admiral's Cup Team reported "sunk" and "drowned." What had initially been reported as "
unreported" on a chalk board at the finish had somehow been interpreted as "
missing" by a Time Magazine news stringer, unfamiliar with sailing. The New York Times and other newspapers then picked up and sensationalized "
missing" to "
lost" (at sea.)
It was a bit disconcerting for my wife to read she was now a widow. And to read my obituary that I'd died at sea.
That's another story I'll tell sometime. This is about JOLIE BRISE.
Wandering around Plymouth after the '79 Fastnet storm I bought a London newspaper. All the English newspapers were bold headlines and front to back with the sailing disaster coverage. There on page 7 a small article caught my attention:
"
Much to the relief of the Exeter Maritime Museum, JOLIE BRISE, the yacht which won the first Fastnet Race in 1925, returned safely to Poole on Thursday night after passing through the weather which shattered the Admiral's Cup Fleet this week.... She was returning from a training cruise to Portugal when the weather broke but according to the museum director David Goddard, both crew and craft are undamaged."
Congratulations, Greg, you win the B&B. Although JOLIE BRISE wasn't racing in the 1979 Fastnet, she was out there somewhere nearby in the same waters, in the same dirty conditions.
And thank you to DURA MATER and DAZZLER for filling us in further on JOLIE BRISE's history. I'd love to hear if anyone in Boston sees JOLIE BRISE this coming week at Fan Wharf in the International Parade of Tall Ships.
As Bill Tilman once wrote, ""She breathes sturdy, eager confidence, a living embodiment of the truth that the sea is for sailing."
