Left: the fleet in the 2018 Golden Globe is expected to be spread out much more even than the fleet in the storm-ravaged 1996/97 Vendée Globe when among several remarkable rescues was Pete Goss’s recovery of Raphael Dinelli, who stayed true to the maxim of only ever stepping up into a liferaft as his Imoca 60 Algimouss sank beneath him. A Royal Australian Air Force aircraft had dropped the Frenchman a liferaft after his own broke up and he clung on in 70-80kt winds while Goss beat 160nm back into massive seas to rescue him. The pair remain close friends to this day


land. At least our modern-day adventurers carry with them the knowledge that if they drop the mast or hole the boat help will be on its way. That definitely places a tick in the ‘harder back then’ column. I am not sure what has motivated the 21


men and women who have signed up and ‘provisionally’ entered the upcoming race. I am sure their motivations are as varied as their boats but each has made a personal decision to take on this challenge. I remember reading Robin’s book about


on the back of a bouncy boat trying to shoot the sun is a pain in the backside… Let’s talk about the weather. That’s the


one thing that has remained the same over the past five decades. Low-pressure systems still loop and swirl around Antarctica and the Doldrums, or pot au noir as the French dub that sticky, windless region, will still be in pretty much the same place it was back when Robin lapped the planet. The sailors competing in the upcoming


race know you can get extremely accurate weather information beamed right onto your screen from satellites. They also know that at one point there were weather faxes and then came weather routeing experts and weather routeing software, but they won’t have access to any of it. Nope, they will have to look out of the window and see what’s on the horizon just as Robin and the others did 50 years ago. The only weather instrument that they


can carry onboard will be the barometer. Like the sailors of old they will know that when the glass is rising good weather is in the forecast and, conversely, when the glass is dropping there is stormy weather brewing. It will be up to them to use their gut to decide where the breeze will come from and where to position themselves to make the best use of it. It’s been a while since sailors had to use gut instinct to make tactical decisions. There is a classic photo of Robin Knox-


Johnston taken before the race started. He is sitting in front of a huge pile of tins, his food for the race. We all know that cans of food are heavy and you can bet the sailors in the upcoming race will do all they can to keep extra weight to a minimum. There is nothing in the race rules that


restricts them from taking whatever kinds of food they like including freeze-dried, but the organisers, perhaps a little cruelly, do not allow any kind of desalination equipment to be carried onboard. It then


becomes a question of do you take extra water to rehydrate your food knowing full well that water is heavy, or is it a better trade-off to take cans and leave the water off the boat? At least this decision can be calculated with some accuracy. No need to involve the gut on this one. There have been times when I have


inserted myself into the idea of this chal- lenge. I know that an unplugged week in the woods would not bother me, but a year without being connected? I am not sure about that. I know about Skype and FaceTime and I know about streaming movies and downloading music and uploading video and I know about auto - pilots that can steer a boat far better than most humans. It’s because I know better that I feel with absolute certainty that I would find being deprived of life’s conve- niences would make the challenge harder and my IQ is marginally higher than 36 so I am unqualified anyway. There is, however, one thing that was


really tough for the sailors 50 years ago and that was that if something happened to them they knew they would be on their own. It’s really hard to imagine what it must have been like to set off into the blue knowing what lay ahead, and knowing too that should they hit something that damaged their boat they would probably sink and more than likely drown. There was so little shipping back then


that the chances of being spotted in your liferaft were between few and none. We have become used to seeing sailors in distress setting off their emergency beacons, alerting race HQ who immediately jump into action alerting all ships and sailboats in the area to divert to help the sailor in need. The ocean must have looked vast and


inhospitable and more than a little bleak to the sailors in the first race. They knew they would be left to their own devices and it would be up to them to survive and make


his race, A World of my Own, when I was a kid. I loved it. I respected the adventure without really having the knowledge of just how hard it must have been for him. You can’t know how much the dreary grey on grey days in the deep south affects a man’s mind unless you have sailed those waters yourself. When I read Robin’s book I had barely


been out of sight of land. In the intervening years I have sailed many thousands of Southern Ocean miles and I know how tough it can be. There was, however, one thing he wrote that I marvelled at. When things got rough, especially mentally, Robin would write that he was on a grand adventure and was sailing around the world for ‘Queen and Country’. He just toughed things out and knew that was what would be expected of him. There are two Americans in the upcom-


ing race. I can’t imagine that when things get difficult onboard, and they surely will, they will tell themselves they are doing it for ‘Donald J Trump and the good old US of A?’ It doesn’t work like that any more and that gets a tick in the ‘harder this time’ column. Many great and historical accom- plishments have been carried out in the name of country, but sadly we all seem to be a little too self-serving these days. When the start gun fires and the sailors


head toward the horizon, which to me always looks like an outstretched arm awaiting us, they will know that it’s going to be a mind game the whole way around the world. They will have to adopt a 1960s mentality even though they are sailing in the 21st century. They will have to forget that laptops


and satellites exist and try to focus on tweaking their wind vanes to get their boat to steer a straight course. Of course when exhaustion sets in they will be able to reach below the floorboards, grab a can of Red Bull and down the contents. Tick one more in the ‘easier this time’ column. q


SEAHORSE 43


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