Caribbeans

"After I’d just turned 19, I hitched a boat ride to the Caribbean. Boarding a tiny boat in the Canaries, I disembarked thirty-three days later on the island of Saint Lucia. I then navigated from shore to shore, from one island to another. I painted portraits on the terraces of cafés. Sometimes, a navigator on a stopover would commission me to paint a watercolor of his boat.

Tourism wasn’t developed the way it is today. I’d swap the portraits I did of employees in Caribbean cafés for a few beers, and offer my deckhand services to passing boats. This is how I came to board, as an all-round deckhand, the Vendredi 13, a 39-meter three-masted racing schooner refitted into a charter yacht, co-skippered by Jean-Yves Terlain, its creator, and by Yvon Fauconnier, who became my brothers for life."

Extract from Œuvres vagabondes, 2016, Éditions Gallimard