G. Martineau – Owner of Maïdo (Swift Trawler 52)

Mediterranean dream

Mediterranean dream

One wet day on Île de Ré, Gérard Martineau was flicking his way through the Neptune magazine, when he began to dream of owning a boat.He started with an Antarès 12 and then was soon taken with the idea of something bigger than he could really live aboard.Owner of a Swift Trawler 52 since 2009, he has been exploring Brittany and its islands for a few years, but this has fuelled a new dream of heading to the Mediterranean at a leisurely pace!

What did the Swift trawler 52 change in your life almost 10 years ago?

Beyond the meetings with friends it inspires, this leisure craft has become a real second home for my partner Isabelle, our Labrador Lota and myself. Up until then I lived in a large home that took up a lot of my free time, we decided to move into an apartment near Tours and to rent out this property. All the energy I put into working on this house has been diverted to my boat, changing our way of life radically. Owning a boat is one thing, but buying a Swift Trawler is a whole mindset and it makes you rethink many of your priorities!

How would you define this Trawler mindset? 

When I was thinking about buying my boat, I had long conversations with Bertrand d’Enquin, who is the pillar of the Swift Trawler developments at Beneteau. He let me try out the first hull of the Swift Trawler 52 line and, during our many meetings, I really discovered that there was a specific mindset to owning this type of boat. It is a cruiser and it stands apart in the world of motorboats. You can really live on board and with a range of 500 miles you can enjoy travelling long distances. Over the years we have become ardent advocates of the Beneteau Rendez-vous and we are also members of the Trawler Club. The social aspect of the boat is definitely very strong among Trawler boaters, making us very similar to ‘sailors’. In fact, I was greatly impressed at the way we were welcomed at the last meeting at La Trinité-sur-Mer, at the heart of Brittany’s sailing valley!

"The Swift Trawler is a cruiser and it stands apart in the world of motorboats."
 

Outside of the club and the Beneteau meetings, do you ever put out to sea with other Trawlers?

 

Just before heading to La Trinité for our fifth Beneteau Rendez-vous, we enjoyed a trip from Pornic to Loctudy with some friends who own a Swift Trawler 34. We boated along the South Brittany coastline in amazing weather. I love boating with friends or in fleets, but for the big project we have in mind today, I will be needing crewmen!  
 

What is this project?

To understand properly, you need to step back a few years to when I bought my Swift Trawler 52. The original idea was to cast off for the Mediterranean. But I live in Touraine and as I was both Mayor and President of the Communauté de Communes (Town Community) until 2015, I could not find the time. So we chose Pornic as our home port and since then we have been travelling up and down the Atlantic coast, from the north of Spain to the Channel Islands. Although our boat is ideally suited to the climate in Brittany and although we have enjoyed it thoroughly, I am now 74 and I would like to make this Mediterranean dream come true in the next three years. My idea is to boat as far as Croatia, at a leisurely pace, visiting everything interesting on the way. I will need travel companions to do this and crewmen for each leg. It will require quite a lot of organization. A note to anyone interested!

“My idea is to boat as far as Croatia, at a leisurely pace, visiting everything interesting on the way. I will need travel companions to do this.” 

Published on 30.10.2018