At the helm of an ocean wanderer

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At the helm of an ocean wanderer

When you’re on a cruise, the voice of the captain, over the PA, becomes reassuringly familiar, usually announcing your arrival or departure from the latest port of call. But on large vessels especially, you could go the whole voyage without physically seeing the man (or woman) at the helm.

That’s most certainly not the case on our cruise aboard Ponant’s Le Boreal.

Greeting us with a smile as we step onto this smart small ship at Greenock, a port just outside Glasgow, is captain Mickael Debien.

It’s the first of several encounters we’ll have with this amiable bearded Frenchman over the next 10 days as he steers us around a string of out-there Scottish islands and up to the even more remote Faroe Islands.

Camera IconCaptain Mickael Debien on the bridge of Ponant’s Le Boreal. Credit: Steve Lyons/Supplied

One of the many perks of this cruise — beyond the exceptional wining and dining, excursions and expeditions — is the open-bridge policy adopted by the approachable captain.

At various times — detailed in the ship’s daily newsletter — it’s possible for guests to enter the bridge to get a captain’s view of proceedings. We head up there on Le Boreal’s approach to Foula, an island of the Scottish Shetland archipelago with some of the most domineering cliffs in the *** (the highest of which soar 418m).

The captain and his officers are using a mix of the old-fashioned (binoculars) and the high-tech (computer screens and radars) to guide us to the best possible position to drop anchor so that a fleet of Zodiacs will be able to safely transfer passengers across to Foula a little later.

“We’re very lucky with the weather,” the captain says. “If it was windy and swelly, we would not be able to stop here as it would be too choppy for the Zodiacs.”

When he’s satisfied everything is in order, the captain turns to me and offers a deeper insight into life on board and how he rose through the ranks at Ponant, a French company he joined in 1998, attaining the status of captain just over a decade later. Such an illustrious position seemed a long way off when he was a boy growing up in the Vendee department in the Pays de la Loire region of western France.

The captain recalls, as a six-year-old, spending weekends and holidays learning the ropes with his uncle, a sailor and director of a sailing school.

“I had the opportunity to sail for free, but I had to work too,” says Capt. Mickael, who later became a sailing teacher to help pay for his studies.

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==Camera IconPonant’s Le Boreal cruising around the Scottish islands. Credit: Steve McKenna/The West ***********

Since 2015, he has been a specialist in Ponant’s cruises to the Arctic and Antarctica. While these polar regions are notorious for the potential headaches they present sailors — not least the ice and tempestuous weather — cruising in sub-arctic regions like northern Scotland and the Faroe Islands provide their own challenges.

“It’s not easy,” says captain Mickael. “There are a lot of currents and tides around the small islands. And the wind can be bad. But we will always try to do something. What’s good about a cruise like this is we can be flexible. We are a small vessel. We have Zodiacs. So we can adapt. We work with the on-board expedition team and we can perhaps find another protected bay or another island to visit.”

Like its Ponant sister ships L’Austral, Le Soleal and Le Lyrial, Le Boreal is always on the go, following the favourable sailing seasons across the globe. A captain will usually spend two months on board, and two months off, with another captain flying in to fill the void.

Having joined this ship in Glasgow, Capt. Mickael will oversee the ship’s journeys around the North Atlantic, up to Spitsbergen in the Arctic, then over to Greenland. While he has a well-earned break, the next captain will sail Le Boreal to northern Canada and across to Alaska via the Northwest Passage.

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==Camera IconPonant ship Le Boreal. Credit: Supplied

Rejoining the ship in Alaska, Capt. Mickael will take it down the Pacific to Hawaii and Polynesia, across to Easter Island then to Ushuaia, southern Argentina, for round-trip cruises to Antarctica. With autumn on the horizon, the ship will then sail back across the Atlantic for the northern spring.

The captain is potentially on call 24/7, of course, and his quarters are a level below the fifth-floor bridge, with a short flight of steps leading to his office — which has a desk, sofa and Nespresso machine, among other features, with sliding doors opening to his bedroom.

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==Camera IconPonant’s Le Boreal cruising around the Scottish islands. Credit: Steve McKenna/The West ***********

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