The incubator for old sea wolves

Go to “The Base”, a place nestled in the heart of the Concarneau shipyard. Behind this large metal door is hidden a real Ali Baba cave for explorer. Pontoons, Workshops, offices and living spaces are available on two levels, a real cocoon where everything is calculated so that the most daring projects come out of the minds of these adventurers, to go and flourish in the big blue.

At the origin of this initiative, there was the ecological awareness of a navigator: Roland Jourdain. In the 2000s, he continued his sporting achievements for many years by crisscrossing the seas of the world. But over time, something starts to upset him: his favorite playground is a victim of pollution, plastic is invading the seas, and climate change is disfiguring even the most isolated regions. Faced with this observation, Roland Jourdain says that he questioned his own environmental footprint, and then quickly declared that he “sought to go beyond that, to find a way to work for the environmental cause using my own experience”.

He has already been exploiting this entrepreneurial spirit since 2007, when he joined forces with Sophie Vercelletto, managing director of the Vendée Globe at the time, to found Kaïros, an offshore racing team expert in the field of composite materials. And it is by combining materials engineering and environmental beliefs that this awareness has changed into taking responsibility. In 2009, within Kairos, a design office dedicated to biocomposite materials, a kind of neoplastic based on recyclable and biodegradable vegetable fiber, was created, without compromising on performance.

Quickly, the initiative aroused the curiosity of explorers concerned with working for the environment. Many of them approach Kaïros to ask for technical advice or simply logistical support for their projects. Roland Jourdain recounts: “Among these requests, we met interesting and committed project leaders, the prospect of helping them was very attractive. We have expertise, premises that are often empty when our ships are offshore, support was possible, we simply had to think about an adequate model”.

The perfect model is that of an endowment fund, a philanthropic organization that differs from a traditional foundation in what it offers to its beneficiaries. Here, the support is not purely financial, it is rather advisory, technical, and administrative to ensure that explorers finally set sail. It is with this philosophy that the Explore Fund was created in 2013.

In fact, the Explore fund works like an incubator where everyone is free to express their creativity and vision. Each expedition joining the adventure has an office, a workshop, access to the pontoon and also receives legal support, so that the passion for the open sea does not come into conflict with the French administration. Explore does not directly fund expeditions, but has a community of sponsors, including some thirty large companies, who, by financing the fund's activities, come to be inspired by these modern-day adventurers.

Some of the first explorers to join Explore included: Under The Pole teams, who dive under the ice to advance our knowledge of marine biology, or The Low Tech Lab project, led by Corentin de Chatelperron, a journey in search of ingenious solutions aboard the Nomade des Mers, a low-tech catamaran. While these two initiatives were launched by professional acquaintances encountered before the launch of the fund, others quickly joined the family.

How did they do it? By coming up with their project under their arms, a passion, and the desire to discuss. “If someone comes up with an initiative, we will discuss it, study it, and review a number of criteria. It's an exchange, the project must be in line with our values: sharing, innovation and awareness.” Sharing is THE condition for joining the crew. While the fund is always ready to welcome new initiatives, Roland Jourdain affirms that they are “far from racing for numbers, in fact we could not welcome dozens of initiatives for simple reasons of space”.

Today, five projects are supported on a daily basis by the explore fund, a figure that is relatively small, but important. Roland Jourdain explains to us: “Initiatives are not waterproof teams, and synergies are created between the various projects. At the core, we transmit knowledge to them, they also bring us a lot, and this creates a real exchange between explorers”. This aspect of transmission, from Explore to the beneficiaries, then from projects to projects, laid the foundations for making transmission, and by extension, education, one of the pillars of the fund.

Primary classes were the first to join the base. Indeed, to make the youngest dream, there is nothing better than to make them experience, at least for a day, the daily life of an adventurer. For Roland Jourdain and the entire Explore Fund team, “It was important to work with national education, because we realized that the latter was really lagging behind in environmental awareness issues.”

These open days are a success, students, teachers and speakers are delighted to discuss this dream machine that is the world of exploration. But in 2020, the health crisis sowed trouble in this major awareness-raising event. So what can we do to continue this transmission in times of crisis? In life, as at sea, you must constantly adapt to hazards. So quickly, the educational component of the Explore fund adapted to the Covid sauce, and distance training courses were able to emerge. Their appearance even revealed the obvious: the formula can easily be extended to other levels, so that middle and high school students also benefit from this experience.

Like all dark periods, the covid storm has finally passed, and the Explore pedagogy division has emerged stronger from this ordeal. Dedicated positions have been opened, and it is now divided into two parts: The education division, which works closely with teachers to bring environmental issues into the daily lives of the youngest. And the “Campus Explore”, a program aimed at putting students at the center of the fund's activities. On the program: Conferences, debates, and even practical cases integrated into university programs.

In total, some fifteen higher education institutions follow a long-term partnership with the fund. One of the most telling is certainly the one with École Centrale de Nantes. For a semester, future engineers are working on developing low-tech solutions inside an offshore racing catamaran, with the aim of achieving an objective that Roland Jourdain is well aware of: the Route du Rhum. Built on the values of creativity, sharing, and openness to the future, the Explore fund makes thousands of curious people dream. And prove to those who continue to doubt it, that with mutual help, a life of adventure is far from being unthinkable.