Cyril Derreumaux has done something nobody else in recorded history has managed: cross both the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean solo, unsupported, and entirely under his own power – in a kayak.
Between two oceans, roughly 175 days at sea, and one aborted attempt that ended in a helicopter rescue, his story is less a vacation adventure and more a case study in what the human body and mind can be pushed to endure.
Forget the plastic rental kayak from your last beach holiday. What Derreumaux paddles is closer to a submarine with a paddle strapped to it – a custom-built ocean vessel engineered specifically to keep one man alive, fed, and moving across thousands of miles of open water, for months at a time, with no support crew and no possibility of quitting halfway.
Two Oceans, Two Records
In September 2022, Derreumaux completed a 2,400-nautical-mile solo crossing from Monterey, California, to Hilo, Hawaii – a journey that took 91 days and 9 hours, roughly three weeks longer than he’d originally planned.
Then, in what might be the more audacious follow-up, he set out from El Hierro in the Canary Islands on December 23, 2024, and paddled roughly 2,500 to 3,000 nautical miles across the Atlantic to Martinique, arriving on March 4, 2025, after 71 days, 14 hours, and 57 minutes at sea.
That combination made him the first person in history to cross both the Pacific and the Atlantic solo, unsupported, and entirely human-powered, in a kayak.
He wasn’t the very first person ever to paddle the Pacific route alone – American kayaker Ed Gillet famously did it in 1987, using little more than a Tofino double kayak, a sextant, and a tarp – but Derreumaux is the only person to have completed both of the world’s two largest oceans this way.
The Boat Is the Real Engineering Marvel
None of this is possible without a vessel purpose-built for the job. Derreumaux’s kayak, nicknamed Valentine, is a roughly seven-meter ocean-going craft made of fiberglass and carbon fiber, custom-designed by Rob Feloy, a specialist in ocean kayak construction.
Toward the stern sits a small, sealed sleeping cabin – just large enough for Derreumaux to crawl into, seal the hatch, and ride out a storm or grab a few hours of sleep while the ocean does its worst outside.
Critically, the hull is self-righting: if a wave flips the kayak, the weight distribution in the bottom of the boat rolls it back upright on its own, without any input from the paddler.
Solar panels on deck power the boat’s onboard systems, including a desalination unit that turns seawater into drinking water and a satellite communication and GPS setup that keeps Derreumaux in contact with a shore-based weather team.
That team sends him wind and current forecasts each morning, letting him plan his route around the ocean’s moods rather than simply hoping for the best.
Feeding a body burning between 5,000 and 6,000 calories a day, across 10 to 12 hours of paddling, means the kayak leaves port loaded to capacity with freeze-dried rations meant to last three months or more.
And when conditions turn against him – strong winds blowing the wrong direction, or simply the hours he needs to sleep – he deploys a parachute-style sea anchor into the water, a device that holds the kayak roughly in place and keeps ocean currents from silently erasing days of hard-won progress while he rests.
The First Attempt Ended With a Coast Guard Helicopter
Derreumaux’s path to becoming a two-ocean record holder wasn’t a straight line. His first attempt at the Pacific crossing, launched in June 2021, ended just six days in.
Violent winds and four-to-five-meter waves destroyed his sea anchor, and without it the kayak began spinning uncontrollably, drifting back toward the coast rather than away from it. As he fought to regain control, water started leaking into the sleeping cabin through damaged seals.
With his situation deteriorating fast, Derreumaux activated his emergency beacon. The U.S. Coast Guard responded with a helicopter rescue, pulling him from the churning ocean and leaving the kayak itself adrift – it was later recovered and repaired for his next attempt.
The Successful Pacific Crossing Nearly Broke Him Anyway
A year later, in 2022, Derreumaux tried again – and finished, but not without a fresh set of near-disasters.
His steering system failed twice mid-ocean, leaving the kayak almost unmanageable in crosswinds until he improvised repairs, hunched for hours in cramped quarters under a punishing sun.
His desalinator broke down as well, forcing him onto a manual backup pump – a grueling, time-consuming process that ate directly into the hours and calories he needed for actual paddling.
Perhaps the most striking part of that crossing wasn’t mechanical at all. Around day 50, alone in the middle of the Pacific with no human contact for weeks, Derreumaux has described experiencing sensory deprivation, hallucinations, and moments of real panic – compounded by a strange realization that the astronauts aboard the International Space Station were, quite literally, closer to civilization than he was.
The Atlantic Brought a Different Kind of Danger
If the Pacific crossing tested his engineering fixes and his mind, the Atlantic tested his nerves in the dark.
Several times during the 71-day passage, unpredictable rogue waves flipped the kayak a full 360 degrees in the middle of the night, throwing him against the walls of his sealed cabin as he slept.
The self-righting hull always brought the boat back upright – but each flip carried real risk of snapping antennas or damaging the delicate onboard electronics he depended on for navigation and communication.
And contrary to what most people would assume, the ocean’s marine life wasn’t what worried him most in open Atlantic waters. It was shipping traffic.
A kayak barely seven meters long is nearly invisible to the radar systems on a modern container ship, and on more than one occasion Derreumaux had to scramble to make emergency radio contact with an approaching tanker to avoid a collision that could have ended the expedition – and possibly his life – in an instant.
What It Actually Takes
Strip away the technology and the record books, and Derreumaux’s achievement comes down to something almost uncomfortably simple: a willingness to spend months at a time, alone, inside a boat barely bigger than a closet, doing repetitive physical labor for 10 to 12 hours a day while the ocean tries, in ever-creative ways, to kill him.
The solar panels, the desalinator, and the self-righting hull make the crossing survivable but they don’t make it easy. That part still comes down to one person, one paddle, and an extraordinary tolerance for discomfort, isolation, and risk that most of us will never come close to testing.
Sources and Further Reading:
- Paddling Magazine – Cyril Derreumaux Announces Intention To Kayak Across The Atlantic In 2024
- Paddling Magazine – Cyril Derreumaux Prepares For Atlantic Kayak Crossing
- Latitude 38 – Solo Kayaker Cyril Derreumaux Crosses Atlantic Ocean
- Latitude 38 – Solo Kayaker Cyril Derreumaux Completes Pacific Crossing
- ExplorersWeb – Kayaker Cyril Derreumaux Begins Atlantic Crossing
- ExplorersWeb – Cyril Derreumaux Finishes Kayaking Across the Atlantic Ocean
- SoloKayakTheAtlantic.com – official expedition site and technical background on the kayak Valentine
/This article is intended for general educational and travel-interest purposes./
