Still woken several times a night by a slow-healing leg wound that is keeping me out of the surf (grumpy) and in and out of sleep (dreamy), I have found myself dreaming restlessly about two particular places of the heart – Hawaii and France, most particularly this week, France.
Although we were back there little more than a year ago, it seems so much longer and in light sleep I see a never-ending slide show of old friends, good times and bad, great surf days on both sides of the Basque border, aprés-surf long lunches on the terraces of Mundaka and Guethary, wild nights in funky little taverns, crazy cross-cultural philosophical discussions over cheese and wine with the best of the local surfing elders, helping Miki Dora up the stairs to his oxygen tank after one of his last sessions at Parlementia, trips up to Contis-Plage to surf with the amazing Berque twins, or else watching them carve the hull of their newest ocean-crossing “sardine can” in the barn of their home at St Julien-en-Born …
Crack! The leg I have to keep above heart level while I sleep slips out of its sling and brings me back to real life. I fumble for my phone to check if it’s worth trying to doze again … the screen is filled with messages from France. Messages in the night are never good.
The news is tragic but not surprising. The surviving Berque twin, Emmanuel, had struggled on for three years since his identical twin brother, Maximilien, had failed to wake on the camp mattress beside him one morning in 2021. Manu posted on social media: “I ain’t been twin since yesterday. Maximilien fell asleep peacefully, but didn’t wake up anymore … gone naked and without any instruments.”
Just as they had made their Atlantic crossings, alone in their tiny sailboats, navigating wild seas by the stars. And with those simple words, my friend Manu brought the curtain down on the strange and wonderful lives that these twins shared. We enjoyed a wonderful lunch with him in Contis in September last year, but the years had taken their toll, not so much in health, although he was frail, but in spirit, which for the Berques, was always indomitable.
Now it’s up to others to find words.
Author and photographer Maurice Rebeix wrote: “Surfing, beach, navigation, masterpieces of boats, built with their hands and varnished like Chinese lacquer, mermaids in bikinis crossing around them, summers spent in cloth, winters at the raft, saw, glue, oceans crossed against all odds, the Contis twins linked their lives to the sea. After Max, Emmanuel stayed strong for two.”
The two was one, as Manu liked to put it, but there were limits to his endurance.
Maurice continued: “Strong offshore wind advisories, strong to high seas. Emmanuel took advantage of it to lift anchor today. Journey ends, journey begins. Twins reunite but friendship takes a toll.”
Surfing historian Alain Gardinier wrote: “Crazy about surfing, travel, navigation, astrology, astronomy, jazz, painting, in short, freedom. All their lives, the kings of Contis have only done so much by ignoring conventions. On a stormy day in the South Atlantic Emmanuel has joined his double among the stars.”
This column has the word “life” in its title and sometimes I despair that it is too often about its direct and inevitable opposite, but throughout their three score and 10 (and a bit) years, the Berque twins filled all around them with the joy of life, from their silly promenade walks in unison at the Biarritz Surf Festival to their insistence on dressing and shaving identically to keep people guessing who was who (got me a few times) to their incredible fearlessness in crossing the Atlantic several times with no power and no instruments, only the stars to guide them. So on this sad Sunday in Noosa, I propose to only remember the fun times.
One story. Midget Farrelly was guest of honour one year at the Biarritz Surf Festival and was so intrigued by the twins that before he flew home I took he and wife Bev up to Contis to spend a day with the boys, surfing, eating, drinking, checking their boats and, yes, doing silly walks in the garden. Midget and I were wearing the same BSF tee shirts, so it was perfect. We laughed so hard we had to open another bottle of Bordeaux.
FOOTNOTE: While looking through the archive boxes for the picture of Midget’s silly walk, and failing to find it, I did find another photo of interest. It shows your columnist (representing the Noosa Festival of Surfing) shaking hands with Biarritz Surf festival boss Robert Rabagny and Biarritz mayor Didier Borotra after the signing of a jumelage (twin festivals) agreement. Bob Abbot later counter-signed it in Noosa and the document has never been seen since. And on the subject of the Noosa Festival, in last week’s column I failed to note that the WSL’s most recent Noosa Longboard Pro was in 2023, not 2020. Must have blinked and missed that one. Apologies to winners Mason Schremmer and Max Weston.
