First time around the world

Servane Escoffier comes from a great French sailing family, but is the only pro. In November she competes in the Barcelona World Race

A name we are sure to be reading about much more as the Offshore Challenges media team sparks up with their Barcelona World Race looming, is French yachtswoman Servane Escoffier, who has teamed up with Spanish Open 60 sailor Albert Bargués to compete in the doublehanded non-stop around the world race starting in November.

Servane Escoffier comes from one of France's most famous seafaring families. All coming from St Malo, pretty much all of the extended Escoffier family sails. Servane's father Bob runs his own charter company - their latest acquisition is a 100 year old three master called Julia, which had been based in the UK - has competed in many of the long distance short handed races. Her uncle, Franck-Yves Escoffier, one of several fisherman in the family, has had a more high profile career having raced in the Figaro class but has more recently been unbeatable in his 50ft VPLP trimaran Crepes Whaou. It has not been uncommon in two handed races like the Transat Jacques Vabre to have three members of the Escoffier family on the start line. In that race Servane competed with her father Bob on board the Open 60 Adecco, (formerly Loick Peyron's 1992 vintage Fujicolor III) in 1993 while all three Escoffiers sailed their own boats two years ago, Servane with ocean racing veteran Bertrand de Broc on the Open 50 Vedettes de Brehat (the ex Cray Valley, Hellomoto).

"Everyone is working with sailing or the sea except my sister and my other cousin," Servane told us. "Actually now, at this time my sister is sailing with my father in Corsica and my nephews as well. So everybody sails."

However while her father and uncle compete in shorthanded offshore races recreationally - yes, some people still do it for fun folks - 26 year old Servane is the first of the fold to turn 'pro', making this move to the dark side two years ago. This was after completing her studies at business school including the best part of a year in Plymouth.

"Franck-Yves did the Figaro, but he is not a professional sailor, he was a fisherman, but everyone is happy for me," she says. "They tell me to take care because of the sea and make sure with this job, that it is 80% pleasure and a good feeling, otherwise it becomes boring and you need to change. As it is good for you and you feel well you learn a lot and you are happy to be on the sea, you just keep going."

While Servane says her first outing on a boat took place when she was just three weeks old, she only began racing in her late teens. Always it has been in keelboats rather than dinghies and her first foray into competition was when she went match racing. Since then she has done four seasons on a Beneteau First Class 8 but more seriously has competed three times in that hot bed for training up French offshore sailors, the Tour de France a la Voile, the last being in 2005 when she drove or did main sheet on Eminence. She has also had considerable success match racing and in 2004 was ranked second overall in the world among women's teams.

Racing Open 60s has been Servane's ultimate ambition and what all she has done to date has been building towards, she says. "That’s why I did a lot of Open 50s like the Route du Rhum and everything like that. After that I did some Figaro sailing, but I had the opportunity to sail around the world with the Barcelona World Race so I am really happy to do that."

Last year she competed in the Route du Rhum, starting from her homeport, St Malo and in this she finished second in class behind Kip Stone's Artforms.

This year Servane followed her uncle Franck-Yves into the Figaro class however this came to a fairly swift end when in the first race of the season, the Trophee BPE singlehander a boat on port collided with her as she was up on the bow. She got clouted by the spinnaker pole so hard that it broke her shoulder and she had to spend two months convalescing. "I still need to be very careful, but it is okay."

Since then she has been wooed away from the Figaro with the Barcelona World Race offer. This she will be sailing with her Spanish co-skipper aboard Ellen's one time Kingfisher Open 60. As this is such an 11th hour project for the BWR, Servane says they haven't had an opportunity to change the boat, only to make it shipshape for them to go off on their qualifier, which to date they have only partially completed. However they will spend a few weeks in Concarneau, where Albert Bargués is based (his day job is as Roland Jourdain's Project Manager).

In terms of her career as a professional sailor Servane says that for the Barcelona World Race, her first circumnavigation, she is happy just to make it around. It will be a huge learning experience for her and racing with Barques will be tremendous as he has a huge technical ability. "We don’t know each other very well but we feel okay. He is a nice guy and he has good experience and he is a very technical guy, so that is good."

Beyond this - who know? The Vendee? "Maybe. The thing is, I always work step by step and I will never say something if I am not sure I am going to do it. But I think that if this Barcelona World Race works well then probably I will try and do the Vendee Globe.
It also depends if a boat is available but the main thing is to find a sponsor. So can you find someone who wants to sponsor me - you can write that on the website!"