Author:
Dmitri
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Date Posted: 11:38:05 03/25/14 Tue
I read a book on the Vendee Globe race about a dozen years back. Probably available through Amazon. There is an official Vendee Globe Web site and a Wikipedia entry for it for those interested. The participants start and end in Europe and circle Antarctica on the race route. They are sailing solo, single handed, one person on a boat, no crew, and the seas are horrendous as Wes describes.
They are certifiably insane in my book (but I get seasick too easily).
Dmitri
>>Another column lifted from the paper.
>>
>>-----------------
>>
>>When the news came out last week that authorities
>>suspect that the missing airliner, Malayasian 370, was
>>believed to be down in the southern Indian Ocean
>>southwest of Australia, the first thought that came to
>>mind was, "Wow! That's Pete Goss country!"
>>Every four years there's a round-the-world sailboat
>>race -- solo, and nonstop -- called the Vendee Globe.
>>It's done in very specialized and very fast boats, and
>>the winning time is usually well under a hundred days,
>>northern France through the around the Cape of Good
>>Hope and Cape Horn to northern France. Much of the
>>race is through the legendarily rough seas and storms
>>of the Southern Ocean, where there isn't much to break
>>the ongoing violence of the weather. Huge storms come
>>one after another, with waves forty, seventy, even
>>occasionally a hundred feet high.
>>Back in 1996, an Englishman named Pete Goss was racing
>>his boat in an area near -- well, within a thousand
>>miles or so -- of the place where Malayasian 370 is
>>believed to have gone down. He wasn't leading the
>>race; in fact, he was back toward the back of the
>>pack, when he received word from race headquarters
>>that another boat, sailed by a Frenchman by the name
>>of Raphael Dinelli, was sending distress signals. No
>>ships were available to go to his rescue; it's not a
>>busy place on the ocean. The one race competitor
>>behind Dinelli wasn't answering his radio: it was
>>broken down. Could Goss help?
>>"I have no choice," Goss radioed the race
>>headquarters. "I have to do it."
>>Having to do it and being able to do it were two
>>different things. Goss was a couple hundred miles
>>downwind of Dinelli, in a fragile boat built for going
>>downwind, and not capable of going upwind very well.
>>To top it off, Goss was in a survival storm, running
>>under bare poles. But he rigged a scrap of sail, all
>>the boat could handle at the moment, and turned into
>>the storm to try and go back for his fellow
>competitor.
>>Goss's boat was knocked down, mast into the water, a
>>dozen times or more that first night, and he wasn't
>>sure the boat would hold together, but he stalwartly
>>beat his way upwind toward the stricken competitor.
>>While he was trying to claw his way upwind, an
>>Australian airplane found Dinelli clinging to his boat
>>and dropped him a life raft -- which was fortunate as
>>the boat sank soon afterward.
>>It took Goss two days to battle his way to the life
>>raft, and it still took the help of patrol aircraft to
>>find it. It was still extremely stormy, and the waves
>>were running high, but in an act of consummate
>>seamanship -- and remember, Goss was by himself -- he
>>maneuvered his boat up to the raft and managed to drag
>>a battered and hypothermic Dinelli aboard. Only when
>>Goss had Denelli safe below decks did he turn the boat
>>back downwind toward Hobart, Tasmania, the easiest
>>place for him to reach.
>>For ten days Goss sailed the boat and nursed Dinelli
>>back from the brink of death. Goss spoke no French and
>>Dinelli only a little English -- but in those ten
>>days, in spite of the language barrier, they became
>>the best of friends, to the point a few months later
>>when Goss was the Best Man at Dinelli's wedding. They
>>remained close friends, and have since sailed
>>long-distance two-handed races together.
>>Goss, who went on to finish fifth in the race, was
>>rightly called a hero for his rescue of Dinelli -- and
>>French President Jacques Chirac pinned the Legion
>>d'honneur on Goss for it; Queen Elizabeth awarded him
>>an MBE. But the honors weren't why Goss turned his
>>boat upwind -- it was the knowing that someone needed
>>his help. As he said, "I knew I had to stand by my
>>morals and principles. Not turning back would have
>>been a disservice to myself, my family and the spirit
>>of the sea."
>>There is an old saw about "wooden ships and iron men."
>>They may build boats of fiber and resin these days,
>>but there still are a few iron men.
>
>
>Very interesting column. Your stories have many
>characters who perform heroic deeds. It's good to read
>about a real life hero.
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