Nailing it – Part I
In sailing, filed under the sub-heading of very serious and very dangerous adventure, you first find the Vendée Globe and sitting next to it the Mini Transat… And then there is Don McIntyre. Aside from being a solo oceanic racer and adventurer of renown, McIntyre has been steadily assembling a tailored portfolio of maritime adventures that are rapidly starting to attract a much broader following among sailors, non-sailors and mainstream media – interest that grand prix race organisers could only dream of. Dan Houston profiles the man… and his growing repertoire
When the British solo sailor Ian Herbert- Jones and his Tradewind 35 Puffin were rolled and dismasted in heavy 25ft seas and 80kt gusting winds in the Southern Ocean on 10 April this year, the developing situa- tion and subsequent rescue were relayed online, almost in real time. Ian was taking part in the Golden Globe
Race (GGR), a 30,000-mile non-stop event for solo sailors to test themselves in the
50 SEAHORSE
world’s most dangerous seas… in old boats… using sextants. Followers of this second iteration of the
GGR heard how the 52-year-old father of three from Shropshire, sailing the 1986 boat in which another competitor, István Kopár, had finished in the 2018 event, watched with fascinated horror as the worsening weather conditions were relayed in relation to his position on screen – some 1,250nm ENE of Cape Horn. Then came the news of his dismasting
together with a Soundcloud file of him talking to race organiser Don McIntyre – relaying how the mast was still slamming against the side of his boat. Water had been coming in (through a cabin hatch), but he’d been able to sort that. Extraordi- narily he still spoke with his signature humorous tone which slightly belies his stoicism, as he had throughout the race. ‘How’s your back?’ Don asks. ‘Painful,
Don – I am running out of movement fast, I’ve damaged my shoulder, got a gash in my head, but it’s the back that’s stopping me moving around very well.’ The following day, still in heavy 15ft
seas, Ian was rescued by the crew of the Taiwanese fishing vessel Zi Da Wang. He had to leap across to a boarding ladder and scramble up and over her side. The weather situation at the time had
been compounded by the southwesterly storm’s 7-8m swell being met by a secondary 2-3m NE swell at nine-second intervals. When Ian survived rolling in that cauldron of saltwater it was easy to think
about him in gladiatorial terms. How, despite being beset on all sides, wounded and beaten, the wind shrieking like demons, he’d been able to communicate with base, stop the leak, eventually to cut the rig away and, with a few more painkillers, to save himself. Because we’d been able to see it all, in
the grand arena of the Southern Ocean via overlays on satellite maps, but also with his voice in our ears… we could ask our- selves: is the GGR the new games of Rome? He could have died. For the second time (the first was in
2018) sailors and non-sailors have been like this online, sometimes quite late at night, vicariously voyaging alongside these adventurers of the GGR. Starting (and fin- ishing) at Les Sables d’Olonne, home of the Vendée Globe, in Atlantic France on 4 Sep- tember 2022, 17 contestants in old boats began the gruelling feat, sailing south, around the three great capes of the South- ern Ocean, unassisted, as fast as they could. For just over eight months fans of the
GGR kept up with daily reports and listened to the gruff, friendly Australian voice of the race founder, Don McIntyre, 68, as he con- tacts the entrants for a few-minutes’ weekly update on their progress, and how they are. Don’s the ideal ringmaster of these
moments as he is an old contestant himself. After a lifetime spent ‘on or in the water’, as he puts it, with a lot of solo and shorthanded sailing, he understands as much about the psychology of doing something like this as he does the materials science of the boats’
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