Jean Le Cam's credo might be summed up as eating, drinking and sleeping sailing and stuffing himself with miles until he's ready to burst. Asserting that there's no school better than the ocean and that only the sea can correct one's homework, he is undeniably one of the sailors who has the greatest number of miles to his credit - yet twenty years of competition have done nothing to curb the curiosity of a man who keeps himself apart from the many vagaries of fashion.

Don't let yourself be fooled by appearances. If you find Jean Le Cam sketching a diagram on a corner of the tablecloth or feverishly consulting his notebook, don't immediately jump to the conclusion that he is in the throes of inventing a new kind of below the waterline fixing or a state of the art furling mechanism which will shave seconds off the time taken to unfurl the gennaker.

Maybe he is quite simply working out a new roof drainage system for his house which looks over the La Forêt bay, scene of his first sailing experiences. Being a pragmatist, with a perpetually enquiring mind, certainly does not have to imply that his sole obsession is sea-related. In his eyes the design of a boat has the same importance as an interest in nature or dipping into family history.

Jean Le Cam enjoys cultivating paradoxes - he is as capable of spending hours at an architect's drawing board whilst validating a design layout as announcing out of the blue that the only truth which counts is a boat's aesthetic quality. He may call himself a single-handed sailor, indifferent perhaps to the route taken by others, striving within the class associations to improve relations between competitors and organisers or working towards improving safety. Although not a man paid for his oratory, he has become a speaker well-known for his abilities and experience in a variety of fields. It is this same person who, though voicing his doubts on the validity of certain methods of preparing for a race such as sophrology, fitness training and other cult therapies, will take the greatest care in every detail that can develop a project and make it more high performance.

Many of his associates pay tribute to the relevance of what he has to say. Although he may have scant interest in fashionable trends and subtleties, he knows how to take on the most daring of projects and make his own contribution. That was the way he contributed to the creation of the CDK Boatyard, one of the principal proponents as regards composite construction, where he collaborated in the design development of the Hydroptère, that hybrid machine which Alain Thébault plans to have flying over water one day. During preparations for the Vendée Globe, Jean is again constantly alert with his questions for the technical teams, the boatyards and the naval architects. Although his methods may be somewhat trying at times, nonetheless everyone agrees that they have been instrumental in allowing the project to assume the dimensions it has.

One Atlantic record, three Solitaires du Figaro (an achievement only shared by Philippe Poupon), twice crowned Formula 40 World Champion, two winning transatlantic crossings and a list as long as your arm of podium positions. Many dream of a list of achievements like Jean Le Cam's. His sole comment - in twenty years of competitive sailing it would be pretty surprising not to win from time to time. Otherwise, what would be the point of sailing?