This fascinating memoir spans the time from Moitessier's magical
childhood in Vietnam to months before his death, is a beautifully
written saga of physical adventure and spiritual growth. Born in the
French Indochina in 1925, Bernard Moitessier grew up astride two
cultures--French and Vietnamese--in a turbulent era that moved
dramatically from peace to war. Imprisoned during the Japanese
occupation, he was later drafted to fight the Viet Minh in a French war
that foreshadowed America's own Vietnam involvement two decades later.
Tamata tells how the 25-year-old Moitessier left Vietnam to answer the
call of the sea. He led the life of a sea-gypsy, wandering the Indian
Ocean, the South Atlantic, and the Caribbean, learning the ways of boats
and the sea and surviving two catastrophic shipwrecks. His greatest
sailing adventures followed, the Tahiti-Alicante passage and his ten
month round-the-world solo voyage in 1969 when he withdrew from the
Golden Globe Race and sailed on to Tahiti. Moitessier then spent three
years on a remote atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago. Called "Tamata"
("try it!") by his Tuamotu friends, he built a Polynesian-style house,
planted coconut trees, and gradually transformed the sun-blasted coral
into a speck of green in the middle of the South Pacific. After living
in the United States, he spent the last years of his life in France. He
is buried in a small fishing village in Brittany.
