7-Year-Old Sailor Got His Sea Legs Cruising World for Most of His Life

Out on the sunshiny blue Pacific, a boy named Briac climbed sleepy-eyed from the cabin just as his wooden sailboat crossed the dotted line that separates the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

His father warned him what might happen on this special day. King Neptune could appear on deck, a rite of passage for those who navigate across the equator.

For days, the 5-year-old boy with wind-tousled hair fretted. Would Neptune be as grouchy as he looked in picture books?

Briac clambered onto the deck to find the king of the oceans--wearing a white beard, clutching a trident and sitting on a throne.

Neptune presented Briac with a proclamation, welcoming him to join boastful seafarers. The mighty Neptune was a benevolent king after all.

Does this sound like a fairy tale? Well, the boy is real. So is the boat, the Spray of St. Briac.

But Neptune isn’t. It’s Briac Bernardin’s dad, Guy, wearing a beard of shaving cream and grasping a harpoon, upright on a plastic patio chair.

Though born on land, in Newport, R.I., Briac, now 7, has spent most of his life at sea, sailing with his parents twice across the Atlantic and once around the world.

Since setting out in 1992, Briac and his family have logged 56,000 miles aboard their 37-foot vessel.

Briac sleeps in a tiny bunk, comforted by stuffed animals. On a shelf nearby is “The Little Prince,” one of his favorite books. Like the prince, Briac loves an adventure. Living at sea gives him plenty.

Briac’s home, this boat, is a replica of a yawl that Joshua Slocum sailed around the world 100 years ago. His playground is the deck, where he spends hours each day making up stories about pirates and heroic sea captains.

Briac also goes to school on deck, his lessons drawn daily from textbooks donated by a school in France. He likes to sit at the table and pretend he’s riding a bus to school. One morning, as his mother waited for him to open his books, Briac told her: “I’m late because there was a snowstorm.”

It’s good to have a lively imagination aboard the Spray of St. Briac because this home doesn’t have a TV, VCR or stereo. It also lacks some conveniences.

With no bathtub, the family takes sponge-baths on deck. Clothes get washed in a bucket. Raindrops on the mainsail provide water to drink. Light comes from two kerosene lanterns, heat from a wood stove.

When Guy and Mitzi Bernardin set out on the high seas they wanted Briac to learn, with the sea as teacher, that life cannot be taken for granted. “To start life like this,” says Guy, “it’s a good start to be a man.”

The Spray of St. Briac arrived in Rhode Island early last month, ending a round-the-world voyage. Early this month, the Bernardins were off again, harbor-hopping before setting out across the Atlantic. In between, at a Wickford marina, they put the boat up on jack stands so they could paint the hull.

On land, Briac sanded a spar his dad had removed. Then, in less time than it takes to read this sentence, Briac tied a perfect bowline. “Do you like the knot?” he asked in his parents’ native French. He smiled up from his white sailor hat.

Guy Bernardin, 54, was reared in the French port of St. Briac, for whom his son and his boat are named. His wife, 48, was also born in France. He was a restaurant manager, she a flight attendant when they met in New York City in 1972.

Guy raced sailboats, soloing three times around the world and six times past the stormy Cape Horn. One day, he nearly died there when the mast of his sleek racer snapped and the boat sank.

Chilean sailors pulled him from a raft. After a second rescue, Guy figured it was “time to relax a little.” So Briac lived for about a year with his parents in North Kingstown, on the western shore of Narragansett Bay.

Then Guy reread “Alone Around the World,” a book written by Slocum about his voyage from 1895 to 1898. It was the first such trip, or at least the first recorded trip, solo.

Guy decided to mark Slocum’s 100th anniversary by re-creating it. In preparation, the Bernardins sold house and belongings, bought a pine-and-oak replica of The Spray, moored it in Wickford, and took up residence.

In 1992, they sailed for France to test their boat’s seaworthiness. Whenever Mitzi took the wheel, year-old Briac was never far behind, snug in a backpack intended for infants.

After a year in France, they sailed to Portugal, Honduras and Guatemala before returning to Rhode Island in May 1995. Two months later, the family set out to sail the world.

“I’m not saying I had no fear,” says Mitzi. “But if you think too much about anything, you won’t go anywhere. There can be danger in everything that you do.”

And there was.

In July 1995, the Spray of St. Briac ran into a storm near the Azores. Rolling seas and high winds buffeted the vessel, and it bobbed like a beach ball as Guy, Mitzi and Briac stayed inside the cabin. The wind blew until it could blow no more.

The Bernardins stayed in Portugal for a year to avoid bad weather. But one night, a great wind blew the vessel onto a sandbar, waking Briac and Mitzi. They scampered out of the cabin, and the boat came to rest at a steep angle.

Eventually they all sailed back across the Atlantic, toward destinations already famous among peg-legged pirates and ancient mariners. On the other side of the Panama Canal, dolphins followed them along their westerly course.

It was here that King Neptune appeared on board and welcomed Briac to the Southern Hemisphere. And it was here that Briac was relieved to recognize his dad beneath the foamy beard.

Time can seem suspended aboard a vessel like the Spray of St. Briac. Unlike modern counterparts, the Bernardins’ boat is unable to sail upwind. So they must wait for a wind to come along and push the boat in the direction they have chosen.

The wait can be tedious. It can also be glorious. Adrift in the middle of an ocean, the three catch tuna, read in the sun and feast on sushi.

Last year, the Bernardins anchored in South Africa just before Christmas. Briac played with children aboard other yachts and swam near Cape Town. As on previous Christmas Eves, Santa found the boat and Briac discovered gift-wrapped toys next to the mast below deck.

On the last leg of the journey around the world, the Spray of St. Briac sailed to Puerto Rico, and one day Briac took his pet cat for a sail around the harbor in the boat’s wooden dinghy. “He tacks just like an old sea captain,” says Guy.

Their journey over, the Bernardins are still aboard the Spray of St. Briac, heading to Portugal to join the World Expo.

After that, Guy and Mitzi plan to send Briac to a real school and provide a home on solid ground. “We will have to explain to him that living on land is different than living on a boat,” says Guy.

Briac likes the idea of living on land for a while.

But the sea seems to be his destiny.

When Briac lets his thoughts drift like cotton-candy clouds, he imagines a man at the wheel of a ship.

The sailor is Briac Bernardin, now grown, and the fearless captain of the Spray of St. Briac.