The French yachtsman is pioneering the use of kite technology to produce clean power for cargo ships
The only souvenir Yves Parlier has kept from his long career sailing the seven seas is the skeleton of a mahi-mahi, or common dolphinfish, almost one metre long. In February 2001, somewhere near the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, he caught this fish with a hook made from a broken aerial. It saved him from dying of hunger. Even now Parlier licks his lips at the thought of the feast that followed. “I started by devouring the offal, then I stripped the fillets and put them out to dry,” he says. “After that I sucked the bones and ate the skin. I had enough food to reach the finish.”
Parlier made this miraculous catch while he was competing in his third and final Vendée Globe single-handed around-the-world race, sailed non-stop and without assistance, a contest he never managed to win. Dispirited and desperately hungry, he had spent the previous 10 days mixing packets of dehydrated food with platefuls of seaweed and krill, seasoned with the spices from oriental soup packets.
I was only three or four days away from Brazil, and I was very tempted to throw in the towel and head for the coast
Related: Wind energy is a key climate change solution | John Abraham
The interesting thing about a kite is that it doesn’t produce any drag