37 days crossing the Atlantic — what we learned

We left Brest on a Tuesday. By Thursday the weather system that was supposed to stay north of our route had not read the forecast. The boat pitched at 30 degrees for 18 hours. Tanguy fixed the autopilot by feel in the dark. Florian took three-hour watches through the night. You learn very quickly who you are when you can't go home.

Thirty-seven days at sea between France and the Azores, Cape Verde, and the Caribbean. Every system on a sailing vessel became something we understood — not from a manual, but from necessity. That experience shaped every technical decision we made in InSail.

Pitching to 5,000 people in Tenerife

South Summit Tenerife. The pitch was four minutes. Four minutes to explain why a wind-powered catamaran could replace a diesel ferry and still make money. The crowd was loud. The jury was skeptical in the good way — the way that means they're actually listening.

We won the BTM Award. More importantly, we had three serious conversations the next morning with people who wanted to replicate the model in their territories. That's what a pitch is really for.

Six months in a boatyard — the unglamorous foundation

Nobody talks about the six months you spend in a yard before you ever sail anywhere. The Noumène refit was our introduction to maritime reality — grinders at 8am, epoxy fumes, a hull that had been underwater for too long, and systems that needed to be understood before they could be trusted.

We came out of it with calloused hands and a mental model for how a vessel actually works — not the theory, the practice. That knowledge is irreplaceable when you're designing a commercial passenger catamaran.

Three months of research, a spreadsheet, and a conviction

The question was simple: could sail cargo be commercially viable on the Huelva–Canaries–Africa corridor? Three months later, after hundreds of calls, dozens of pricing models, and a benchmark analysis comparing our GDS1 model against 40-foot container rates across major European ports, we had our answer.

It depends—but mostly, no. Current cargo prices are simply too low for us to be competitive at the scale we were analysing. That said, under the right conditions—right cargo, right route, and sufficient volume—it works. But that scenario would require significant capital investment to build purpose-designed vessels.

Trying to launch with already existing boats proved difficult. Without buyers willing to absorb higher transport costs in exchange for a more sustainable option, adoption was limited. Unfortunately, we are not there yet.