PARIS, Dec 5 (AFP) - A yachtsman's drama off South Africa, where British competitor Alex Thomson has had to run off course in the Vendee Globe world race to save his boat, has coincided with a distant but related event -- the opening of the Paris boat show.
The link lies in the rise of competitive sailing in the last 40 years and media coverage notably in the last 10 years that has done much to stimulate and broaden the appeal of leisure yachting as disposable income has risen.
France has ridden, and driven, this wave of interest in leisure yachting, and boating in all its forms, with great success, being home to the biggest cruising sailboat manufacturer in the world, the Beneteau group.
It is also home to one of the big three European boat shows. The other two are held in London and Duesseldorf, Germany.
The head of the French boating industries federation, FIN, is Annette Roux, herself a central figure in the growth of the French industry having inherited a small family business building wooden fishing boats and developed it into the Beneteau giant.
She did so by exploiting the mass-production potential of fibreglass and building to a price for chartering, a particularly strong segment in France.
With success and acquisitions, Beneteau penetrated the US market where it manufactures, achieving global sales of 637 million euros (853 million dollars) in 2002-2003 -- more than half of total French boat industry sales.
In a statement for the opening of the show on Friday, she said the French industry, covering yachts, motor boats, leisure fishing boats, canal boats, inflatable craft and related activities, expected to see growth of 5.0 percent in 2004 "despite a strong rise of the euro against the dollar".
The FIN estimated that French industry sales would exceed 1.0 billion euros in 2004 from 944 million in 2003 when the share of exports sales at 558 million euros was more than half. French production has risen steadily for seven years from 23,800 boats of all types in 1997 to 44,394 in 2003.
However, the French industry, in common with boat manufacturers elsewhere in Europe, has had its cycles. Although the leading names are now becoming substantial businesses, the European industry comprises a large number of small builders.
In Britain, where there was strong pride in personal ownership and maintenance of "the proper cruising yacht", there was a tendency to scoff at the mass-produced French boats with many bunks, but not any more.
In any case, in the last 15 years some new names have appeared on the list of respected builders of sailing yachts. Alongside such names as Swan, Oyster, Moody or Hallberg Rassy have emerged Bavaria Yachts of Germany, Elan Yachts which are built in Slovenia and now Poncin of France.
In the last 10 years expertise in yachtbuilding has developed in a number of formerly Communist countries, in the Baltic region and in Croatia for example.
Bavaria Yachts emerged as a smaller, but price-competitive rival, to Beneteau. But both are now being challenged by the new Harmony range from Poncin, which has invested heavily in advanced production techniques to offer an all-in boat at a highly competitive price -- about 110,000 euros for the 12.42-metre Harmony 42. Beneteau has launched a Cyclades range.
With yachting being open to people of modest means, via clubs, chartering, accompanied "flotilla" chartering, and private ownership, coupled with the long-life of fibreglass boats, there is a shortage of moorings in many areas.
Roux said that France alone was short of 54,000 moorings but that about 200 projects to extend yacht harbours would create 35,000 berths.
However the problem can be acute in some areas of Europe in summer, along the coastlines of Croatia, southern France and southern England, for example.
In Europe, leisure, or gentleman's yachting, as it was known, has its roots in Britain although wherever there was coastline and wealth people sailed for enjoyment, social style and their health.
Towards the end of the 19th century and by the outbreak of World War II, yachting had extended into the middle classes in Britain, and the Low Countries and France for example.
The popularity of yachting with a strong, if small, fraternity of yachtsmen in those years is shown in such works as the novel "The Riddle of the Sands" by Erskine Childers -- a story based on a true logbook -- of two men on a holiday sail from England to the Baltic who discover a German battle fleet preparing for the outbreak of World War I.
Then there is Paul Gallico's masterpiece "The Snow Goose", a love story featuring a tiny sailboat that sailed to take British soldiers off the Dunkirk beaches in 1940, and the "Swallows and Amazons" series of stories by Arthur Ransome about children and sailing dinghies in the north England lake district.
Many books of long voyages, or of simply messing about in boats, have lured landsmen -- and women -- into the mysteries of seamanship, the discomfort of bad weather and the delight of discovering a new harbour. Today, digital film of races such as the Vendee Globe, while offering platforms for sponsors, is also believed to draw people into sailing schools.
In many harbour taverns, true "yachties" will say that the book that began it all was "Sailing Alone Around The World" by Captain Joshua Slocum in his sloop "Spray," published in 1900.
In France the beginning of the growth of leisure sailing was a race victory -- by Frenchman Eric Tabarly in the 1964 British trans-Atlantic race.
His winning yacht, a black schooner called "Pen Duick II", is on display outside the yacht show this year, a monument to the history of yacht racing and a measure of the technological advances that racing has contributed to the coastal sailor.
12/05/2004 03:09 GMT - AFP