Re-entry is a bitch
Brian Hancock considers the unavoidable and often (deliberately) overlooked issues of ‘back to reality’ that every ocean racer confronts when stepping ashore for the last time…
A
s the Volvo Ocean Race nears the end of a very long and brutally tough lap of the planet I have some news for the sailors and their shore
teams. Re-entry is going to be a bitch. Let me explain why… based on personal experience. Years ago my old mate Skip Novak
wrote the book One Watch at a Time recounting our circumnavigation aboard Drum in the 1985/86 Whitbread Round the World Race. Back then the course was 27,000 miles, almost 20,000 miles less than the current Volvo Ocean Race, but because the boats were a lot slower it took just as long to get around the world. We were often asked, ‘How the heck does any- one sail 27,000 miles?’ It’s a good question. That’s a long way
to go on a sailboat blown only by the wind. The answer is simple. You don’t look at it as 27,000 miles. You look at it as four legs. Back then the race had only three stopovers: Cape Town, Auckland and Punte del Este in Uruguay. Then you look at each leg, say the first from England to Cape Town. That’s only 7,500 miles, still quite a distance but a lot less than 27,000. Instead of looking at the entire leg why
not just think about the first half? England to the Equator. That’s around two weeks sailing at the speeds that we were travelling in the 1980s. Well, instead of thinking of it as two full weeks why not break it down into one week? One week is not so bad.
46 SEAHORSE
Anyone can manage one week at sea, right? A week is only seven days so instead of
taking it a week at a time why not just take it one day at a time? That’s easy. In the course of a day at sea you have three, maybe four watches. Why not just take it one watch at a time. You see, a watch goes by pretty fast and soon you have knocked off a day’s worth of watches and you are onto the next day and then the next and before you know it you are across the Equator, your stopover in Cape Town is long over, so is New Zealand, Uruguay and you are closing in on the coast of England with almost 27,000 nautical miles under your keel. That’s how you do it. You take it one watch at a time. So what does all this have to do with
re-entry? Let me explain, because I have seen friendships end, marriages break up and disaster ensue and, no, I am not kidding. The military have a term they call the
Brotherhood of Camaraderie. It’s that unbreakable bond that is formed between men on the battlefield, a bond forged through danger, deprivation and a razor- like focus. If you haven’t been there you have no idea what it’s like and only those who served alongside you really under- stand what it was all about. As strange as it seems, many people
re-enlist once their term is up. They come home and feel rudderless. There is no one there who understands what they went through, no one who can relate to any of it. The only people who can relate are
those who were there, and going back to the battlefield is the only way to ensure that you get back among your brother- hood. Choosing a place where bullets whistle over your head is preferable to a suburban living room that lacks that deep sense of camaraderie that, once experi- enced, becomes addictive. Most of us live pretty predictable lives.
We get up at the same time each day, perhaps we go for a run or to the gym, or we skip both. Work is fairly predictable, after which each day ends in about the same way. A couple of drinks tossed back, dinner, some TV time and then if all is right with the world, bed so that you can get some rest in order to do it all again the next day. We don’t think too much of it and we
certainly don’t notice the clanging going on in the background of our brains. It has been there, building for years, and we have learnt to either accept or ignore it. It’s just part of being a human. Well, let me tell you that it shouldn’t be a part of being human. After Drum I sailed aboard the Soviet
yacht Fazisi in the 1989 Whitbread Race. The crew was the aforementioned Skip Novak and myself, along with 14 Soviets, none of whom spoke a word of English. I took one watch and Skip took the other
and we rarely spent any time together. At each watch change we would exchange some small talk, discuss the wind and tactics and then scoot off for the comfort of the bunk. Because no one spoke English I would mostly sit alone with my thoughts
ALAMY
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