Jean-Yves Bernot

a madforsailing interview with the legendary French navigator, now working for djuice dragons

Frenchman Jean-Yves Bernot is a legend among ocean racers. He has been a weather router for many, many successful campaigns and planned the strategies for those who win, including the famous French team victory in the Admiral's Cup of 1991. Bernot is that rare bird in his profession - someone who is equally effective as a navigator on board as he is a shoreside weather and routing expert. Most recently he sailed with Cam Lewis' maxi cat Team Adventure in The Race and spent much time last year coaching Ellen MacArthur prior to the Vendee Globe.

Not in the first flush of youth, Bernot is now to tackle the Volvo Ocean Race as the navigator aboard djuice dragons. Bob Fisher met him at their Norwegian training camp at Sandefjord and asked him first why he was doing this race.

Jean-Yves Bernot: I have known Knut for eight years and I was very keen to work with him on a long term basis and when Knut decided to do the race again - after the last race he said, of course, "never again" - I believed he had a very innovative approach in terms of design. I like this type of challenge, going out of the mainstream, and as a good team man I like to work with the Norwegians because these guys are well organised, making things simple, working hard without complications.

madforsailing: What about the planning of the navigational strategy?

JVB: First, I did The Race with Team Adventure because I could sail a round the world race at high speed to see if things worked out as expected and whether I could get a good result with the meteorology. We have made a long term study evaluating strategy bearing in mind what happened last time (in the Whitbread) and taking care to observe the new course for this race, which is quite different from the last Whitbread. It was a round the world race, but the small legs on this one count for so much. So it needs a quite different approach from what was done before, that is why we have a different set-up and a different type of boat.

mfs: How do you plan the weather strategy for the shorter legs, because they must be more difficult than the longer legs?

JVB: Not so much difficult as different: but my experience with the Admiral's Cup will count as I compare them to a Fastnet for example and we plan it as we did for the French team in 1993 or 1991 when we had a good result. This means hard work and good teamwork as we believe that everyone on board should be involved. I am not a secret navigator. I don't want to keep it to myself in the nav station. We have to discuss the strategy with everyone on board. We have a good prediction plan and getting invovled in a fight with another boat is always good. Even the guys who don't think they have any idea of meteorology, sometimes can provide the key to unlock a good idea. I found this while working as navigator on Team Adventure.