A sailing legend is gone. Canadian skipper Mike Birch, winner of the first edition of the Route du rhum, died Wednesday at his home in Brec’h (Morbihan) at the age of 90. It had been diminished for several months. He died quietly that night in his sleep,” France Birch, wife of the sailor for 40 years, told AFP.
“He was an extraordinary man. He was extremely discreet and simple. He kept this simplicity to the end,” his niece, lawyer Aline Simard, told AFP. Mike Birch made sailing history at the age of 47 by winning the first Route du rhum in 1978, a solo transatlantic race rallying every four years Saint-Malo (Ille-et-Vilaine) to Pointe- in Pitre (Guadeloupe).
Aboard a small 12m yellow multihull (Olympus), the native of Vancouver, son of a war aviator converted to insurance, had beaten the powerful monohull of Frenchman Michel Malinovsky to the wire to win with 98 only seconds ahead, after 23 days and 7 hours at sea. In “I rode the oceans”, Birch, who had discovered the world of sailing by ferrying boats, alone or with a crew, recounted this feat in 2017 who revolutionized offshore racing.