Sangatte (France) (AFP)

Since childhood, Franky Zapata had this "crazy dream to fly" ... A dream come true thanks to his "Flyboard", a flying machine that this self-taught 40-year-old former jet ski champion, himself invented.

"I'm never as good as when I have my back stuck to the wall," he said Saturday the day before crossing the Channel standing on this machine powered by mini turbojets. An allusion to his first failure, midway, July 25, 110 years to the day after the exploit of Louis Blériot, first aviator to cross the strait.

This new bet a bit crazy to cross the Channel was puzzling a few weeks ago even if, during the military parade on July 14 in Paris, Franky Zapata had left speechless the public flying over a few minutes the Champs-Elysees, rifle at arm, on board his machine in front of the presidential platform.

But the Zapata clan-his wife Krystel, omnipresent by his side, his 10-year-old son, Mat, and all his team-believed hard to the odds of one who recalls that, in his old sport, the jet-ski, " the only way to live properly was to be number one. "

"It's really a golden guy, so we all want to get lost for him, his feat is ours!" confided last week to AFP Jacky, a member of his team.

Brown, rather small (1m68) but athletic, Marseille accent, jokey, Franky Zapata still has a broad smile. This "dyslexic, dysorthographic and colorblind" who stopped the school "at 16" did not have all the cards in hand to become a sea ace then airs.

- "He will never stop" -

"He did not differentiate the yellow and red buoys that indicate the passages on the right or on the left," his friend and former rival, the animator Vincent Lagaf, told franceinfo. "So, he stayed in second or third place to follow the others until the last lap, then he released the horses to win".

This construction contractor son, passionate about mechanics, who judged his jet skis not powerful enough, then decided to manufacture them himself. "He was able to weld two engines into a V8 and he learned everything about Google," says Vincent Lagaf.

"Stuntman, pilot, entrepreneur, inventor, I do not know what I am, a little bit all at once and nothing at the same time", recently tried to explain Franky Zapata.

Several times champion of Europe and the world in the category "Runabout" (sitting), Franky Zapata undertakes in 2011 to take off.

He could, however, like Icarus, burn his wings in his desire to conquer the air. In the various stages that led him to perfect his "Flyboard" in the workshops of his company at Rove (Bouches-du-Rhône), he had two phalanges cut during an experiment.

Franky Zapata, who concedes "a share of madness", nevertheless pursues its objective and succeeds in 2016 to make his machine a real autonomous flying machine, fueled with kerosene. No more water to propel and take off.

"Anyway, nothing stops him, he is like that, he will never stop!", Entrusted his wife Krystel to the press after her successful crossing of the Channel.

The only time the black-clad champion seemed to creak Sunday, burst into tears: when his son threw him on the phone, just after arriving at St Margaret's Bay: "You're the best, Dad!"

© 2019 AFP