Guirec Soudée, a 26-year-old Breton had been sailing around the world alone for five years. His voyage included being trapped in Arctic ice for 130 days, surviving 15-meter waves, nearly capsizing repeatedly, and being imprisoned briefly by Canadian coastguards. He also became the youngest sailor to navigate the formidable Northwest Passage between the Pacific and the Atlantic solo.
Soudée's has a lone sailing companion: a Rhode Island Red chicken named Monique.
From January 2014 to their return to Brittany in December 2018, the pair covered 45,000 miles. They crossed the Atlantic, travelled to the North and South Poles, across to Cape Horn, back to the Caribbean and home, punctuated by stops to repair the boat, wait out the weather, or earn money. Every adventure, encounter and disaster (there were plenty of all three) was recorded in jaw-dropping pictures and funny videos on their increasingly popular social media accounts (they now have 125k Facebook and 42.8k Instagram followers).
I can’t help but to think of them as the real life equivalents of Disney's Moana and Hei Hei.
(Image Credit: Phil Fisk / The Observer/ The Guardian)