French Bohème

The Pacific is ours!

The crew of French Bohème love boats. All boats. After leaving France aboard a small Tiki, they switched to a Pahi 31 (which had been given to them!). In the West Indies, they bought Jason, a 40-foot monohull, a centerboarder, which is much more comfortable and spacious than the Pahi.

French Bohème

Published 17/05/2024

By Gilles Ruffet

Issue: 196

Published: july / aug. 2024

Discover this issue

Who: Nicolas and his family
Where: Around the world
Multihull: Wharram Pahi 31 Facebook: @French Boheme
YouTube: @French Boheme sailing the world

We could have left on our new monohull. We bought it over a year ago in Martinique so we could live comfortably in this hurricane zone, where there is one squall after another, summer and winter alike. In the West Indies, we had settled into a good rhythm. Life was ticking along, we had our routine, and we were earning some money. But we started to get wanderlust again! We missed the nomadic life, and the Pacific finally seemed accessible to us. The Pacific. Our ultimate goal, the Eldorado of sailors. Its doors had closed on us three years earlier, thanks to the Covid pandemic, so at that time we decided to set sail again for Europe, before heading back to Martinique to replenish the ship’s coffers. If we were to follow in the footsteps of the great Polynesian navigators, we would need the most beautiful of boats, so we refitted our beloved Pahi 31 which had been designed by James Wharram. We transformed the entire deck to unleash her potential and added the comfort she was lacking. We removed the rig, installed a central cabin and crowned it with a magnificent crab claw rig on a bipod mast, all forward, supported by a small sprit sail on the mizzenmast. How stylish! With this new home-made rig, we successfully navigated the Caribbean Sea, and have now arrived in Panama. We are waiting to transit the canal before entering the world’s largest ocean. That’s where the real adventure will begin. In the Pacific Ocean...