Our story
Seven boats. One lesson.
The story of Eagle Ray Expeditions, from seven boats to La Paz.
Thibault Poirson de Cardon, founder of Eagle Ray Expeditions, learned to sail at seven on small boats around Belle-Île, his grandparents’ Breton island.
Kitesurfing, diving and freediving came later.
So did a career: seven years in Mexico City’s tech scene, from Cornershop to Incode, where he led the European launch and key international accounts, then Jumio, where he ran Mexico. He spent those years as the client who books adventure travel and needs it to just work.
Then came a plan: in 2025 he would find a boat, join a crew and cross the Atlantic before Christmas.
He set out to cross an ocean. He ended up building a company. It took seven boats and no intention of stopping. These are the seven.
Boat 1 · EOS, an Amel Maramu
In July 2025, Thibault flew from Mexico to Hendaye, on the French Basque coast, to join EOS. The boat belonged to Franck, the older brother of his childhood friend Alexis, and the plan was simple: a bluewater boat, people he trusted, an Atlantic season.
A few days aboard showed him something he hadn't counted on. The project was moving on a different clock from his. Nobody was wrong, the timing was. He kept the friendship, kept the purpose and changed boats.
It was the first lesson of Eagle Ray: read readiness and expectations honestly, before anyone leaves the dock.
Boat 2 · Tawhiri, a Dufour 360
Next came school. Twelve days at Les Glénans, the French sailing school, from Vannes toward Brest. Seven people shared a thirty-six-foot boat. They reefed, tacked, navigated, cooked and repaired, and learned how fast one person's mood changes the whole boat.
The skipper, Zach, could be demanding and stay calm at the same time. He taught step by step: understand the manoeuvre, take a piece of it, then do it. People left more capable, not more dependent.
A good skipper does more than steer. A good skipper makes room for everyone else to learn. That is the kind of captain we look for.
Boat 3 · Silver Kiss, a catamaran
August 2025, Croatia. Four days on a catamaran with The Brotherhood, the friends Thibault met at university in Barcelona, and their partners. Fifteen years later they live in different countries, and this was a way to spend real time together: swimming before breakfast, long meals, nobody leaving at night.
He found the boat on a charter marketplace. That part worked exactly as it should: dates, size, budget, location. What a booking could not settle was the fit between the group and the skipper. They had different ideas of how much the skipper should shape the trip. It was still a great holiday.
It was also the moment he saw the gap. A marketplace can find the boat. Nobody was designing the experience around the people on it.
Boat 4 · Najida, a sailboat
October 2025, Greece to Tunisia. Captain Jean-Michel had invited Thibault to sail with him. He first said no, and when his other plan fell through, he called back. Less than forty-eight hours later he was in Greece, joining a crew mostly in their sixties. He was thirty-three and wasn't sure if he was a guest, junior crew or just the young one.
Long passages, night watches, the rhythm that starts when land disappears. Back home, difficult family events had filled his whole field of vision. Offshore, at night, with no constant stream of messages and dolphins beside the hull, they found their real size. The problems stayed. The noise went.
Age stopped mattering once the watches began. The boat was small enough for everyone to have a part in it.
Boat 5 · Adventure, a sailboat
Late October, the Canary Islands. Every winter, boats gather there before the trade-wind crossing to the Caribbean, so Thibault went to look for his boat in person. Adventure was full of French people around his age, many of them between jobs, relationships or chapters of life. The conversations went where those conversations go: what am I good at, what kind of life do I want, what comes next.
He liked the owner's idea that a boat is meant to sail, not sit in a marina, and that younger captains should be trusted to grow into command. But Thibault needed to cross before Christmas, and Adventure was comfortable with an open timeline.
A trip needs both: freedom in the days, and structure around the commitments that matter.
Boat 6 · Blue Challenge, a sailboat
November, Lanzarote to Las Palmas. Blue Challenge belonged to Baris, a Turkish sailor who had spent months crossing from Turkey to the Canaries alone. Even he was reconsidering three weeks alone on the Atlantic, and Thibault sailed with him to see if he could be the second crew member.
Two people on a boat means nowhere to disappear. Sleep, decisions, humour, stress and risk are shared all the time. Thibault respected Baris, and knew the format needed a fit that wasn't there yet.
By then he had spent months solving the same puzzle: right boat, captain, dates, crew and atmosphere, with no way in except personal networks, dock conversations and crew boards. The fit between people is part of the product. It shouldn't be left to chance once the boat is booked.
Boat 7 · Enola, a seventy-foot aluminum expedition yacht
Mid-November. The calendar was closing, and Enola was actually leaving. A seventy-foot expedition yacht built for remote seas, with a multi-year plan that reached beyond the Caribbean to the polar routes. On paper, almost exactly what he had imagined.
During seven days from the Canary Islands to Cabo Verde, offline and surrounded by ocean, Thibault made the decision that Eagle Ray had to exist: a way for people to reach this world without months of crew boards and uncertainty.
Then, days before the Atlantic departure, near Santa Luzia in Cabo Verde, Enola struck a submerged rock. They made it through, but she needed serious repairs, and the crossing was over. For days he resisted stopping. Then he chose to fly home and spend Christmas with the people he loved.
The Atlantic ended there. But Eagle Ray started.
What the seven boats left
Thibault never reached the Caribbean. What he brought back was more useful than the line he had drawn on a map. The moments that stayed with him were rarely made by the boat. They came from the people on it: a skipper who teaches calmly, old friends who turn a charter into a shared home, a night watch with no signal.
Most charters start with the boat: pick one, pick dates, add a skipper, adapt the trip to what's booked. He wanted to do it the other way round. First the group and what they want from their days at sea. Then the crew who fits them. Only then, the boat.
Why La Paz
Mexico had been home since 2016, thanks to the friends he made in Barcelona. The Sea of Cortez puts sailing and remote anchorages in the same day as diving, marine wildlife and desert coast, without asking every guest to be an expert sailor. Eagle Ray began in La Paz because that is where all those threads met.
How we work
Most charters start with the boat. We start the other way around: first the group and what they want from their days at sea, then the crew who fits them, and only then the boat.
We sail with private groups only. Nobody shares the deck with strangers, and nobody is fitted into someone else's schedule.
And we're honest about the sea. The Sea of Cortez decides a lot of things: the wind, the water, which bay is calm tomorrow. When it does, we say so and change the route. Some of the best days on board were never in the plan.
The sailboat is how we get there. It was never the point.
Our crew runs the boat and keeps everyone safe, so each day can follow what the group actually wants: diving in, learning to read the wind, changing the plan because something showed up, or doing nothing at all. The sailboat is how we get there. It was never the point.