Just two of the more recent examples of events and adventures that would never have happened without Don McIntyre’s roving imagination and determination to deliver on some of his best ideas. Also his passionate belief in the underlying desire deep within a large coterie of human beings to test themselves to the limit if only they can access the right opportunity… In late April Kirsten Neuschäfer became the first woman to win a solo race around the world, demonstrating first-class planning and seamanship, as well as how you push a sailing event onto the modern world’s front pages. Then there is McIntyre’s next round-the-world event – a one-design race that is aimed at home-builders. Dozens of these 5.80 Class Globe designs are sprouting up everywhere; in a Transatlantic test-race won by McIntyre himself last year the boats proved tough and fun to sail. Nevertheless the route for the 2024 event runs ‘sideways’ round the globe, through the Panama Canal with Good Hope the only great cape passed to the south
design. The chats, and the insight Don brings to them, are the most intimate part of the output of the GGR, which consists of news reports, overviews often using an over- laid Windy forecast chart and a lot of detailed information on the website. But despite the modern technology of
our being able to ‘see’ them, the skippers can’t see much of us, or each other; they just have HF radio. This really is a retro race, for retronauts.
The skippers use sextants and charts to navigate. They aren’t allowed GPS (except in emergency), radar, chart plotter or a mobile phone. Nor can they use an elec- tronic calculator, watch or clock. They use a mechanical log. They can have an elec- tronic depth sounder. They’re not allowed Spectra, carbon fibre or other high-tech materials. And while not slaves, in the gladiatorial sense, they are very confined. It’s a far cry from the coverage of the
first race, in 1968-1969, sponsored by The Sunday Times, where the sailors were so invisible that one, Donald Crowhurst, thought he could pretend he’d sailed around the world. Massively in debt to his sponsor, though completely unready he goaded himself to sea on his trimaran Teignmouth Electron and ghosted off South America before heading back. Of the nine original contestants who left
English shores in 1968 just one, Robin (later Sir Robin) Knox-Johnston was the only sailor to finish the course, sailing his Bombay-built 32ft teak ketch Suhaili from and back to Falmouth in Cornwall in 312
days. Six of the others didn’t even get out of the North Atlantic, including Donald Crowhurst. When Nigel Tetley’s 40ft tri- maran Victress sank on 21 May 1969, just 1,100nm from the finish, Crowhurst’s guilt got the better of him and it is believed he committed suicide by jumping over- board leaving his boat drifting in the North Atlantic. Bernard Moitessier, who had started in his 39ft steel ketch Joshua, famously quit the race to sail around the world and into the Pacific again, ending up in Tahiti on 21 June 1969. His note at the time, fired with a slingshot onto the deck of a freighter, said simply that he was happy and saw being at sea as a way to save his soul. The Long Way, his book of the experience, established him not only as a mystic of the sea but also as one of the most eloquent pilots of the deep range. So McIntyre’s GGR is a strange combi-
nation. Modern technology overarches an anti-tech sporting event – which, lasting eight months or so, is probably the longest in the world. It’s that long because it delib- erately uses older boat designs with long keels and heavy displacement that are slow. These, though, are the boats that hopefully stay upright after being inverted, unlike some more modern designs which go over and stay over. ‘Part of the reason we chose the boats
we did is we never want someone to have to get into a liferaft,’ Don explains. ‘They can just disappear, and I’ve lost friends like that. So even if you’ve been rolled over and completely trashed, you need to consider
the boat’s hull to be your ultimate liferaft. ‘And that worked well until Tapio
Lehtinen’s S&S 36 Benello Gaia Asteria mysteriously sank.’ Don refers to the 64- year-old Fin losing his boat in just minutes after being roused from sleep by a bang on 21 November 2022, 460nm ESE of South Africa. ‘Tapio spent half a million euros on that rebuild and it was redesigned not to sink. She sank with him having to get into a liferaft, but it’s still a mystery how it hap- pened. Fortunately the weather was very good at the time,’ Don adds. Tapio was rescued, initially by Kirsten Neuschäfer, 39, and then transferred to a ship. Kirsten, many will know, went on to
win the event, finishing in her Cape George Cutter Minnehaha on 27 April, closely followed on the 28th by Abhilash Tomy in Bayanat, a Rustler 36. The only other contestant to complete the race is Michael Guggenberger aka Capt Gugg, 44, in his Biscay 36 Nuri, who arrives at Les Sables as I write. Simon Curwen, 62, in his Biscay 36
Clara, and Jeremy Bagshaw, 59, in his OE32 Olleanna, are in the Chichester Class – so called because they had to make a stop. Jeremy was still at sea with 1,000nm to go at the time of writing. The very few names to be added to
those who have already sailed solo around the Horn, and the other great capes of the Southern Ocean, attests to the sheer attri- tion of the event on its participants. Even the total is a very small number, at around 200. Well over three times that
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