"They surfed at breakneck speeds of twenty-five knots or more down
waves like steep hills in winds of near-hurricane strength": Just
another day on the Vendee Globe, one of those single-handed,
round-the-world sailing races that "answer to the needs of sailors
eager to reach their uttermost limits," vibrantly captured by Lundy
(Scott Turow: Meeting the Enemy, not reviewed). The Vendee Globe
demands that sailors take their boats 27,000 miles, unassisted and
nonstop (the winner takes about 15 weeks), from France clown to
Antarctica, pull a clockwise turn about the Pole, then beat it back
to France. This means that most of the time the boats will be in
the Southern Ocean, Lundy points out, that malevolent stew of
relentless, homicidal low-pressure systems that are also known as
the roaring forties, furious fifties, and screaming sixties. Lundy
follows the 1996-97 race, which featured the surreal
contemporaneity of some boats finding the charmed path while others
were so piteously beaten by heavy weather they would have been
happy with 80-foot waves and at least a part of their masts. Call
it apocalyptic sailing in what one sailor terms "a miserable, mean,
vicious place," the kind that attracts sailors not given to solemn
ecstasy; they court this insanity and it all feels a little
pathological. Few got to enjoy "the exhilarating flat-out, downwind
rush of Southern Ocean sledding"; more typical were acts of extreme
heroism. You don't abandon someone in trouble in so remote a place;
at one moment they sail through the point on earth farthest from
land, some 1,660 miles out. "Only a few astronauts have ever been
farther from land than a person on a vessel at that position." And
the astronauts weren't in a capsized sailboat, with a finger
chopped off, up to their neck on a freezing ocean, and without food
or water. Lundy does a marvelous job of keeping all the contestants
in the action and unspooling this tale of high-seas terror with
flair rather than melodrama. (Kirkus Reviews)
'Non-fiction it may be, but it contains all the tension of a thriller' Stuart Alexander, The Independent The Vendee Globe is a 27, 000 mile, single-handed yacht race through the world's most treacherous seas. A four month journey where the sailors pit themselves against icebergs, hurricane-force winds and waves the height of six-storey buildings. On 3 November 1996 sixteen sailors, including Tony Bullimore and Pete Goss set out. Only six crossed the finishing line, six others withdrew or were disqualified for seeking outside help, three were plucked fro m sinking boats while the world watched and one disappeared without tr ace. It is a captivating tale. 'This is a book which vividly transcen ds its immediate brief as a narrative of the race and those who sailed it, and presents a gripping and poetic evocation of the terrible and seductive power of the sea' John Tague, The Independent on Sunday
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