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| The crew of the Drakkar, bought from an owner in Belle-Ile and still registered in the maritime district of Auray. On the left the boss Nicolas Coguen, Ilan Le Bouille, Maxime Valer and Corentin Didier, |
The Drakkar is Nicolas Coguen's third boat. With his friend Tony Samséou, owner of the Capricious, he has just bought, in Lorient, this trap, to fish exclusively for octopus.
And three! After the Ikaria, the Ikaria 2, here is Le Drakkar, Nicolas Coguen's third boat. He has just bought it from a fisherman from Belle-Ile, with his friend Tony Samséou, owner of the Lorient gillnetter La Capricieuse. “We put in €200,000 each and I am the manager,” explains Nicolas Coguen. The potter will be armed for the same species as the Capricious: the octopus. An almost miraculous catch.
The guys are making a fortune right now, with octopus. They've been everywhere for a year. “Guys are making a fortune right now with octopus. They've been everywhere for a year. Last weekend, La Capricieuse landed 2.4 tonnes of octopus. Antony stopped doing conger eel in September 2021, to fish exclusively for octopus. Around Les Glénans, there are around fifteen boats, sometimes one on top of the other, from Concarneau or Lorient. At the moment, it is sold at auction between 6 and 8 € per kg. This winter, it was €10. And since they eat everything around, lobsters, shells, clams, obviously everyone goes there”.
At sea on Wednesday
Nicolas transforms the Drakkar into a potter. “Everything is removable. We can go back to the net, when we want. I have all the licenses, net, line, trap. I even have a small quota of sole. We'll see…” For the moment, from Wednesday, he will track down the cephalopod around Groix for daytime tides: 4am, return to quay at 4pm.
A new start for the Lorient boss, who could have baptized his new boat Resilience. Repeated health problems turned his life into hell. A dirty bacterium, a golden staphylococcus, contracted during an operation for phlebitis of the arm, at the Salpêtrière hospital in 2009. Months of suffering, therapeutic wandering, five successive operations, a cocktail of 18 antibiotics to swallow for three months, eventually come to terms with the episode. The Ikaria 2 will be its resurrection in 2011. The story could have ended there and life could have started again.
An unfailing mind
This was the case for a while. But in 2020, Nicolas had to undergo a new therapeutic wandering, for an inguinal hernia which, once again, made him suffer enormously. The diagnosis (late) made, an operation, benign, is scheduled for August 2020. “I decided to sell my boat at that time. I was in too much pain,” he recalls. And history repeats itself. Intense pain for weeks, misunderstood by the medical profession, before the pain centre of the Mutualist Clinic found the reason. And the remedy. A nerve was severed during the operation. A long and painful treatment will eventually eradicate the pain. “When I saw that I was getting better, I decided to go back to sea and buy the Drakkar with Antony”.
Nicolas tells all this while having fun. "I have a foolproof mind, he argues in front of the round eyes of his interlocutor, in front of this relentlessness to find the sea. I understood that feeling sorry for my fate would not make me move forward".
