Father-and-son champion sailing team on saving lives and the bonus of being a double-handed crew
- Philippe Grelon passed on his passion for sailing to his family, especially his youngest son, Cosmas
- Cosmas took lessons aged 12, and started representing Hong Kong in competitions. Now they compete together
When Philippe Grelon was a young boy growing up in Lille, in northern France, he dreamed of sailing. Aged eight, he constructed a makeshift boat complete with wooden mast and sail, and tested it out in the garden.
“I wanted to see if it was strong enough to withstand the wind before putting it in the water. By the time I was 11, I was sailing with 18-year-olds on the family boat. We used to sail in the winter and had to break the ice to get the boat in the water,” says Grelon.
That passion for sailing never waned. When he and his wife, Florence, lived in Sydney, Australia, in the early 1990s, they built baby hammocks on their sailing boat for their twins, Paul and Adrian, so the family could get out on the water together.
But it was their youngest son, Cosmas, born in 1995, who was really bitten by the sailing bug. Now the sailing sports leader and brand ambassador for sports equipment and apparel maker Decathlon in Shenzhen, southern China, one of his earliest memories is of being on the boat aged three.
“We were sailing, and the boat was keeled over so much I was scared, freaking out that it would capsize,” says Cosmas.
From Australia, the family moved to New Zealand. Grelon hoped that his children would love sailing as much he did, and his not-so-subtle attempts at persuasion are the stuff of family legend.