Youen Jacobs interview, copyright Victoria Mary Clarke, 2003

            Youen Jacobs is a handsome young sailor, which is a very romantic thing to be.  Even more romantic is his background.  His father, who is also called Youen was a sailor too. One day, thirty three years ago, he sailed away from his native Brittany and found himself marooned in Baltimore, en route to Galway.  Stories vary as to what happened next.  The more romantic locals say that he jumped ship at Sherkin Island and found himself inexplicably drawn to a small schoolhouse from whence he heard children’s voices singing ‘Baidin Fheilimi”.  Upon knocking on the door, it is said, he was greeted by a beautiful blonde schoolteacher called Mary with whom he was instantly smitten.  She, being smitten also, allowed him to live in a shed at the bottom of her garden.  And because he had come away from home with no money, he fixed up a broken rowing boat and he took to fishing for shrimp and lobster, with much success, impressing all the local fishermen with his knowledge of fishing, despite having been a teacher himself, before leaving France.  He then married the schoolteacher and together they opened a French restaurant in Baltimore and had three children.  He also started the first fish farm in the area and began to breed prize-winning race-horses.  A man of limitless talents and legendary charm.  So if you are looking for a handsome sailor to make your life complete, you only have to wait on Sherkin and one might come along.
            The French restaurant part is true.  ‘Chez Youen’ does exist and it overlooks the pier at Baltimore.  And despite never having formally trained as a chef, Youen Jacobs senior has a mighty reputation for his cooking.  The family have another restaurant, the ‘Jolie Brise” a few doors down which serves fresh fish and pizza and this too, has a great reputation.  Not least because it is highly affordable and open all the time, even on Christmas day and on bank holidays.  It is in this very restaurant that I now find myself, and even though there is a power cut in the area and all the other windows are dark, Youen is still making pizzas, because there is a generator.  The locals have come in droves, to sit somewhere warm and eat.
Being a champion sailor, Youen is shaping up to qualify for the Olympics, in 2004 and as part of getting in shape for that, he has had to put on weight.  Two and a half stone so far, he tells me.  Seeing as his other great talent is cooking, especially pizza, I didn’t think that would be difficult.  But you can’t just binge on pizza, it has to be muscle that you put on, not merely flab.  He doesn’t even drink, -a diet Coke is his tipple- except for maybe one or two beers on New Year’s Eve.  The conversation turns to coffee drinking, something else the French are exceptional at and he says that if he drinks too much coffee, he runs the risk of failing the drug tests, so he limits that, as well.
            Youen senior exists, also.  Described by a lady friend of mine as the most handsome man she ever saw, in his prime, he still cuts a dash, armed with a hand-rolled cigar and the most impressive eyebrows in Ireland.  He came here on a sailing holiday, he confirms, thirty three years ago, exactly and decided not to leave.  Baltimore was very different then, he says, very different.  Not so much of the Celtic Tiger, not so much of the rat-race, which he had been hoping to escape from.
            ‘Do you like politics?’ he asks me, helping himself to a glass of wine.  I tell him that I’d be in favour of the Green Party.  He’s a socialist, himself, he says and he thinks the Green Party do a bit too much interfering in things they know nothing about.  Youen junior agrees.  He and his father generally agree about things, he says, as is natural for father and son.  I tell him that I don’t often meet sons who say that about their fathers and he looks surprised.
            Youen senior did marry the schoolteacher from Sherkin. Whether it was love at first sight, he won’t confirm or deny.  He says he didn’t live in a shed, he re-built a house.  And he did make a living as a fisherman.  He developed the shell-fishing in the area, which had been non-existent, when he arrived.  The restaurant happened because he had always been able to cook, his mother having been a cookery teacher.  And it proved popular. 
Because of the success of the business, Youen junior can afford to take the time to compete in sailing events and to put in the serious training required for a shot at the Olympics.  It would not have been possible for him to become as good as he is, if it had not been for his father buying him his first boat at the age of eight and driving him around the country to regattas. 
“You couldn’t do it without the support of a family like this,” he says.  His mother also drove him around the place and both of his brothers regularly help him out by covering for him at work, when he has to train.  Even his girlfriend has to put up with the constant travelling and training and not having time to go out and do normal things.  If it’s a toss-up between going away for the weekend with her or training, he has to choose training.  It takes total dedication and discipline to get to the level he’s at.  His father has always encouraged him, without pushing him, he says and would have allowed him to do whatever he had wanted to do.  Anything? 
            “Well, maybe not anything!” he giggles.  Youen has an adorable smile and is totally at ease, chatting with me.  His father shuffles in his seat and looks around the room, out of the window, anywhere but at me.  He has one blue eye and one brown eye, which is mesmerising, when you notice it.
            ‘Have I said enough, yet?”  Youen senior wants to know.  You don’t like being interviewed, do you? I ask.  He looks at the television, longingly.  No, he doesn’t.  So he leaves Youen junior to talk.  He’s very excited about the prospect of going to the Olympics, to represent Ireland, which will happen if he is ranked as the best in the country in May of 2004, but in order to get there he needs to raise sixty two thousand euros, this year.  It’s an expensive business, sailing and last year he took his boat around Europe in a van, travelling to the various regattas, and took twenty eight ferry trips, in the process.  This year, he has had to hire a coach, as well, which will add to the expense.  But when you are competing with the best in the world, you have to have standards.  As Roy Keane pointed out.  Roy, Youen says, has changed the way Irish people think about world championship sports.
            But why choose sailing, as your thing, if it’s so expensive and so time consuming?  “The lure of the sea,’ he says.  “I grew up with it, it was only natural that I should be a sailor.  My father sailed.”  He has two brothers, though, neither of whom are sailors.  One, Louis is studying acting and the other, Pascal, is a chef in training.
            ‘Ah, but sailing is very liberating,” Youen points out.  ‘When you go out sailing, no matter how bad things are in your life, they are forgotten about.  Your mind is only on sailing, for the whole time that you are out there.  It’s totally addictive!”
            Is it very Zen?  I ask.
            ‘That’s it!  It’s very Zen,” he laughs.  When the Twin Towers were attacked on September 11, and he and his team were in Boston, unsure whether Boston would also be targeted.  And it was terrifying.  But they were able to forget all their fears, as soon as they took to the water.  He’ll give the Olympics his best shot, Youen says, but if he doesn’t make it he won’t mind, as long as he did his best.  All of Baltimore will be there with him, on the day.  “You can’t imagine how good that feels,” he says.  Will he, one day, just up and sail away to another country, like his father did, and never return to Baltimore?
            “Oh, no.  I’ll be around here forever,” he says.  And with that he goes back to making pizzas.  The best pizzas I’ve ever tasted.  The locals wouldn’t let him leave here, even if he wanted to.