Pete Goss became a national and international hero when he rescued French yachtsman Raphael Dinelli as his boat sank beneath him in the round-the-world single-handed sailing race, the Vendee Globe, on Christmas Day 1996. In doing so Pete scuppered his own chances in the race but was awarded the Legion d'Honneur by France's president and made a friend for life in Dinelli. Close to the Wind is his own story of the race and its dramas, his revolutionary boat, Aqua Quorum, his thoughts and emotions during four months of solitude at sea, the extraordinary surgery that he had to perform on his own elbow and the aftermath of the rescue in the Southern Ocean.

On November 3, 1996, former Royal Marine Pete Goss embarked on the most grueling competition in his sailing career: the Vendee Globe, a nonstop, single-handed round-the-world yacht race. For the next seven weeks he met every challenge in his stormy path, from combating waves the height of six-story buildings to grappling with his spinnaker in high winds. Then everything began going wrong: His sails were destroyed, his navigation equipment proved useless. And on Christmas Day his radio picked up a Mayday that a French competitor was sinking 160 miles away. Turning into the hurricane-force winds, Goss set out to rescue a near-dead man on a life raft somewhere in the vast wilderness of the merciless southern ocean. How he did it makes this extraordinary tale as amazing as it is thrilling.