Olivier de Kersauson de Pennendreff is a French sailor and sailing champion.
Kersauson was the seventh child in a family of eight. While he was the only Kersauson not to have been born in Brittany, he was born on 20 July 1944 and brought up near Morlaix in a “provincial Catholic aristocracy with compulsory mass” as he calls it. Very early on, Olivier de Kersauson was to break away from his family. Without being inattentive, he was a pupil who did not settle in well to school life with the priests at boarding school. He passed through eleven schools altogether. After his final school exams and getting up to a lot of things, always on the coast, he began studying economics.
At the age of twenty-two, he met Eric Tabarly in Saint Malo. Shortly after, Eric invited him to do his military service on board. This opportunity stretched into eight years during which he was Tabarly’s mate.
In 1973-74, he was a crewmember on the yacht Pen Duick VI in the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race.
Together, they put on their boots and waterproofs, swallowing up the miles aboard the Pen Duicks. Very quickly, Olivier de Kersauson developed a passion for multihulls in which he became a pioneer.