CQS Evidence

The hands

You do not rebuild a sixteen-metre ketch with two pairs of hands. There are the ones who came for a weekend, the ones who came back, and the ones who scraped the hull in the middle of winter, in the rain, and never once asked why. This page is for them.

Not one of them was paid and not one of them had to come. CQS Evidence owes a good part of what she has become to them.

Enzo

My mate, and setter on the volleyball team. He is the one who took on the viewing and the negotiation for the boat — the only one of us who met the owner in the flesh.

To thank him, I had booked him an absolutely dreadful hotel room, right before we left for a beach volleyball camp.

Enzo in a volleyball shirt, on an indoor court
Rémi and Léa under the hull of CQS Evidence, hands and T-shirts covered in blue paint

Rémi and Léa

Founding members of team Claro que Si, friends of mine for more than five years. They came to roll epoxy onto the hull — a filthy job I had not told them much about, but funny enough that we had a good time with it.

Elliot

Official carpenter to the boat, and unfortunately too tall not to bang his head. A founding member of team Claro que Si, he came to work the boat’s timber on his own holiday, at the same time as he was converting his van.

The two of us climbed the highest summit in the Indian Ocean in 2025. Hoping to go back there aboard CQS Evidence.

On the rim of the Piton de la Fournaise crater at daybreak
Arthur and Brieuc on their knees on deck, redoing the Sika seams between the teak planks

Arthur

What is there to say, other than that we have been friends since nursery school. A serious help on the deck seams, and just as effective at stripping out the inside of the boat.

He had the misfortune to take part in scraping the hull, in winter, in the rain. That is also how he became an important member of the crew.

Brieuc

Arthur’s mate, and by now simply a mate. He came to help with the deck seams and is to this day part of the best Sika-laying team there is.

He earned his place in the crew at the price of hands covered in sealant.

He is in Arthur’s photo just above : that is the Sika team in full.

In full protective suits in front of the hull of CQS Evidence, at the yard
Sanding the deck of CQS Evidence, sitting on a stool between the winches

Louise, Tom and Julie

A crack team that came to take on the hull epoxy. Unmatched for efficiency — which did nonetheless meet its limits on the deck seams.

Tom managed to hold the work and the schedule together, which let me get quietly lost in the electrical panel.

Greg and Melissa

Melissa watched the project being born: she was my flatmate and saw the work on the little CQS in the garden. She is still wondering when I am going to stop. I do note a certain lack of confidence, though — she would rather fly to Corsica than come sailing with us.

Greg, alias the man who can do anything, has helped on an enormous number of fronts. A craftsman of the whole thing, who works wood on the small pieces and the big ones alike.

Without the two of them, the project might never have existed.

Aboard CQS Evidence at sunset on Lake Geneva

Special mention: my parents

They helped with money and with their hands. And they have put up with me through all these years and all these mad projects — this one is no exception.