Problem-Solving Perspective
Loïck Peyron is an accomplished bluewater racing sailor, having crossed the Atlantic 43 times, 18 of them singlehanded, among other feats. Successful singlehanded sailors understand better than most the need to take a fresh view of problems. “The first time I [came to aid of a fellow racer in distress] was 20 years ago during the first Vendée Globe in 1990,” says Peyron. “[Another racer] Philippe Poupon, a good friend of mine, sent a distress message. At this time we did not have any satellite phone and were just working with radio. It was in the South Atlantic, quite far south, maybe three weeks after the start. Nobody knew what happened to him. I was the closest to his position, the last position. It took 24 hours against a big, rough sea and I hoped to find him when I arrived on the position, I didn’t know if he was in his life raft or maybe the boat sank. I discovered the situation, which was quite bizarre, because the boat was not upside-down, not sunk, but on one side—the mast exactly parallel to the water. When I arrived alongside the boat, I thought the keel was not there, but it was there. The reason was that the boat was a sloop [when it was launched], and just before the start of the race, they decided to add a mizzenmast and the weight of the mizzenmast made the balance of the boat change. Poupon spent 24 hours in this position and he was really sure to sink, and he was quite afraid when I arrived at the boat.”
“The interesting thing is he didn’t sort it out himself about cutting the mizzenmast, and so I had to say that to him,” says Peyron. “He cut the rig of the mizzenmast and then the boat came back, and that was a very nice moment. But for me that was not a nice moment, because that was my first round-the-world trip. And we were not at the end, but just at the beginning. Maybe he saved me because I was the only one between all the opponents of the race to have seen this show, and maybe it calmed me a little. I entered the Indian Ocean with a bit more conservative view.”
The Lesson: “When you have a big problem, sometimes you are only focusing on one thing,” says Peyron. “It’s very important to have the wider view of the problem like when two chess players are thinking about their game and you just arrive and you immediately see something that they don’t because you have another view. It’s very interesting to try to see a situation from the outside.”
