"Prendre le vent" on Evasion - Blog

A second ocean crossing and a stay in the Caribbean later, we are celebrating the accomplishment of our Atlantic tour. Our ultimate goal was to reach Guadeloupe, and we did! Added to this achievement is another reason to celebrate; the upcoming broadcast of our journey on the Evasion channel.

In a series of 10 episodes called Prendre le vent, it will soon be possible to relive with us all our encounters, our difficulties and our joys, which we no longer count. We are very proud of it, but we won't hide it from you; the realization of this series has brought us its share of challenges!

The idea of a television component was born very early in the development of the project. It was important to us that our ocean adventure reach as many people as possible, whether it be to inspire our fellow human beings to live their dreams, to take up sailing, or to do their part to preserve the fragile balance of our oceans.

To each his own role

As novice navigators, this was also the first time the three of us had ever filmed for television. So we went in blind, trying to do our best and learn quickly. Guigui, with his audiovisual skills, took the responsibility of cameraman and official director. As for Yoyo and Eli, they took charge of the content of the series. All three of us became more comfortable in front of the camera, with the desire to express our feelings, emotions and thoughts as authentically as possible.

Fortunately, we were not responsible for the editing; where would we have found the time? We regularly sent all the scenes we shot to Blimp TV, our production company, by mail on a hard disk. The whole team did a great job. They supported us all along the adventure.

At the beginning of each episode, we composed the main lines of our scenario, which evolved as we went along. We often filmed many more scenes than necessary. When you think that we sometimes spent a lot of time shooting certain segments that ended up nowhere, you might be disappointed! But it's not the case, we are aware that this is part of the game. And then the shooting allowed us to make more than one precious encounter that might not have happened in normal circumstances.

A risky operation...

As one can easily imagine, the biggest challenge of the shooting took place during the navigation. If it's not easy to maneuver a sailboat, it's even less easy with a camera in hand. Special mention to Guigui and Eli, who had to rescue Yoann who fell in the water, while filming the scene!

Sometimes, in critical moments, the solution was to hang Gopro at strategic places. Like the time when we crossed the path of a violent storm, in the middle of the night. At that moment, we needed all our arms and heads to maneuver the boat.

Another tricky undertaking was to take aerial images of Bleuet in full sail. Yoann's outstretched arm served as a take-off and landing strip, Guillaume was at the controls of the drone, and Elisabeth was at the controls of the sailboat. In this case, the zero risk does not exist. But we are good navigators. On the hundred or so flights, the drone's engine always shut down when dry.

In the end, we are really happy with the result. Our favorite maxim has remained the same since the beginning; the secret to success is to get started before you're ready. Without that, we'd probably still be docked, with dreams in our heads. Instead, we've fallen victim to an overflow of memories, which we're very happy to be able to share with you all. See you on April 27th for the first episode, and get ready, it's going to blow!