After a couple of weeks of crises, a serious illness in the family (thankfully not my illness, but sadly still my family), a plunge into the deep-freeze and general all-round aggravation, I’m taking a bit of a break from the heavy politics and write about something I’m actually quite passionate about: Sailing in general and specifically the 2022 Golden Globe Race.
Those who know me know I’m in love with sailboats. I cut my teeth on a friend’s little Hunter 23.5 trailer-sailor more than twenty years ago and I’ve had the bug ever since. I used to crew on race nights out of the now sadly-defunct Port Hope Yacht Club on a variety of boats and it was a lot of fun… not to mention a great way to get out on the water if your sailboat budget is (as mine was at the time) only in the double digits. Last summer, as the first step in getting our own boat, my spouse and I registered for a keelboat program and passed the Sail Canada Basic Cruising Standard exam. The buy-our-own-boat plan has taken a bit of a financial hit recently, but it’s definitely still the long-term goal.
It might seem odd that I, a self-described anarchist and perennially broke person, is into sailing. After all yachting has traditionally been the purview of the wealthy, right? Well, yes. Back when sailing yachts were made exclusively of wood they cost a fortune to build, another fortune to maintain, and were generally far, far out of reach of the hoi polloi in their little wooden dinghies. Then came fibreglass, and all of a sudden sailboats were comparatively cheap and within the reach of the same working class which was enjoying their burst of post-war prosperity. Fibreglass boats, when maintained and cared for, can last pretty much forever… which means that there’s a huge number of fibreglass boats on the used sailboat market which can be bought relatively cheaply.
So despite its historical reputation, sailing is not the rich man’s exclusive sport anymore. It does require some money and a lot of “sweat equity” to maintain a sailboat but in my experience the boating culture of the Great Lakes is very a blue-collar, working class one. Sure, some yacht clubs are snootier than others, but by and large sailing in Ontario is far more of a beer-and-burgers vibe than a champagne-and-caviar one.
Quick aside: If you are looking to get into sailing, contact your local yacht or sailing club and find out when their weekly race night is – everyone’s always interested in having another set of hands for a race, or even just some “rail meat” to help eke out that extra fraction of a knot. It’s a great way to get a feel for the sport (and the culture of your local club) without having to commit to a club membership right away. Invest in a well-fitted PFD and some non-marking deck shoes, put on lots of sunscreen, and enjoy yourself.
Being interested in sailing de facto means I’m interested in racing sail, because whenever you get two boats going in more-or-less the same direction you’ve got a race. And there are no lack of races to follow: The transatlantic Route du Rhum; the famously democratic Sydney-Hobart race; and especially the non-stop, solo around-the-world Vendée Globe. But all these races are dominated by, well, racing boats. Supremely engineered, professionally crewed “Maxi Yachts” or single-design classes like the IMOCA 60. These are the elite of the sailing world… and therefore I don’t find them all that terribly interesting. If I were interested in sports cars, these would be Formula One racecars; impressive in their speed and engineering, but frankly out of reach of the common person. I will never drive a Formula One car, nor will I ever handle an IMOCA 60.
Which is why I’ve gotten so interested in – possibly obsessed with – the Golden Globe Race. Like the Vendée Globe, it’s a non-stop round-the-world solo sailing race departing from Les Sables d’Olonne in the Départment of Vendée, France. Competitors leave France, sail down the Atlantic to the Cape of Good Hope, then clockwise around Antarctica past Cape Leeuwin and Cape Horn, then back up the Atlantic to Les Sables d’Olonne. Unlike the Vendée Globe, however, the GGR does not use super-yachts nor does it permit the use of modern navigation equipment or autopilot. Instead, all vessels are production-line full-keel monohulls between 32 and 36 feet in length, designed before 1988. Navigation is by sextant, sun-sight, stars and chart; self steering gear is by mechanical wind vane; communication with the outside world is strictly limited.
Why is the race put together like this? Because in 1966, British sailor Francis Chichester sailed solo around the world with only one stop in Australia, triggering a public mania for the first solo sailor to circumnavigate the globe without stopping at all. The first Golden Globe Race was hosted by the Sunday Times in 1968, and it was – we can say this with the benefit of hindsight – an absolute shit-show. As detailed in Peter Nichols’ extraordinary book “A Voyage For Madmen”, the lashed-together race had few rules (and some would be changed during the race itself) no vetting of competitors (at least one competitor literally stepped off the dock in England not knowing how to sail) and minimal vetting of boats. Most of the boats that set out had no business being in the Southern Ocean and a couple of the boats – bilge-keeled weekend coastal cruisers – had no business being in blue water at all.
Nine men sailed out in that race. Only one, Robin Knox-Johnston, would complete the course and return. The rest of the story is one of endurance, disaster, courage, madness and even suicide. Having recently re-read Nichols’ book, it’s no wonder the race wasn’t repeated until half a century had passed: more than fifty years later it’s still a horrifying tale of folly, desperation and potential legal liability the likes of which had never been seen before or since.
The Golden Globe Race was revived for the fifty year anniversary by Don McIntyre, an Australian sailor and adventurer, as an homage to that original disastrous race. But only as an homage, the modern Golden Globe Race was carefully calculated to recreate the challenge of the original without recreating the precarious chaos of the 1968 race. Modern safety and communications equipment is carried, although not used except in emergencies. Strict rules about hull construction, competitor experience and even the race route itself ensure that the risks were minimized… although not, as it turned out, eliminated. Over the ten months of the 2018 race a number of the eighteen competing boats were damaged, three were lost entirely and several competitors were injured, worst of all Indian sailor Abhilash Tomy, who broke his back when his boat was rolled.
Fast forward four years to the second modern GGR, the 2022 edition. It started later in the year than the 2018 version, in September rather than July, in the hopes that the Southern Ocean weather would be calmer, but for the sixteen competitors there has been no lack of drama. The first month alone saw three boats out of the race – two withdrew voluntarily and a third grounded on a reef in the Canary Islands; followed by a number of retirements in Cape Town in October and November; the sudden sinking of Asteria on 18 November and the dramatic rescue of Tapio Lehtinen by fellow-racer Kirsten Neuschäfer; and most recently a number of mechanical casualties as boats are being pushed to – and past – the breaking point.
It’s been endlessly fascinating, a real drama. I get up in the morning, make coffee, and read the daily race report on Facebook in both French and English. It’s been such a rivetting thing to follow for weeks and months… and the last ten days or so have been particularly gripping.
As I write this, on Day 153 of the 2022 race, only six of the original sixteen competitors remain in the race, and only four of them in the non-stop Suhaili class. (If you stop once, you get downgraded to Chichester class; stop twice and you’re out.) Up until just last week it looked like the race winner would clearly be Simon Curwen on Howdens, he had a generous lead of more than 1200 nautical miles over second-place Abhilash Tomy (yes, the same guy who broke his back in 2018); in a sudden reversal, however, Howdens was knocked down and her self-steering gear destroyed. Tomy has been forced to heave-to on Bayanat while recovering from re-injuring his damaged back and Kirsten Neuschäfer, who had been openly contemplating quitting the race over the frustrating rules around the Exclusion Zone, is now in first place and rapidly expanding her lead aboard Minnehaha.
There is, however, no guarantee that she’s going to win the race. Two weeks ago I would have put money on Curwen winning… assuming I could find anyone foolhardy enough to take the bet. Today? Neuschäfer’s got a good chance, but there’s still a long way to go before Cape Horn, let alone Les Sables d’Olonne. There’s a chance she might not finish. Hell, there’s a chance nobody will finish.
Uncertainties aside, I am definitely rooting for Neuschäfer. She’s a long-distance competitive sailor of considerable skill and daring… and she broke off her race without a moment’s hesitation to rescue Tapio Lehtinen when his boat Asteria sank. That is the true mark of a sailor – you just drop everything and set a course to assist another sailor in need. This was drilled into us during our sailing course over the summer: the willingness to render aid to a vessel in distress is not just the legal and moral requirement of a sailor, it is a defining feature that makes a sailor a sailor.
While the I believe the GGR is the tougher race, the Vendée Globe famously bills itself as “The Everest of Sailing” which is not a comparison I personally would want made. There is a place on Mount Everest known as Rainbow Valley, so named because of the brightly-coloured parkas, boots and packs of the dozens of frozen corpses abandoned there. In many cases, the dead perished on the climbing route and other climbers had to push the bodies out of the way in order to continue their own ascents. Some of these bodies are (content warning) used as landmarks by other climbers. On more than one occasion it’s been recorded that climbers on Everest have literally stepped over dying men in order to complete their own ascent – to a sailor, that is utterly repugnant. And before any climbers who read this get upset – it’s an attitude that’s repugnant to many climbers, as well.
It takes drive and determination to climb mountains, or to cross oceans. I’m not sure I’d ever have that drive but one of the things I like about sailors, real sailors, is that the culture of sailing doesn’t let ambition interfere with being a decent person. Quite the opposite, in fact: any sailor who would refuse to assist another just to win a race would be a pariah thereafter.
I guess that’s one of the things which makes the Golden Globe Race so appealing to me. It’s not just that a 36-foot plastic classic sailboat is more accessible, or that I’ve been following the racers so closely for months that I’ve developed some sort of parasocial relationship with them (I probably have), it’s that I can see in them the kind of sailor I want to be. And, like boat ownership, that’s an attainable goal.
And as for being a sailor and an anarchist? I see no contradiction there. Indeed, small craft sailing is actually a good example of anarchism as a philosophy: every boat is free to set its own course so long as it doesn’t harm or foul another, and every boat must be willing to render aid when required and able. There are universally understood and respected principles of behavior, there are the laws and regulations demanded by the nature of the environment and everyone is expected to follow them, not because of the potential for punishment but because they make sense and work to the benefit of all. Above all, mutual aid is built into the culture of sailing (despite yachting’s historical association with the rich) largely, I suspect, because of small craft sailing’s roots in dangerous commercial fishing.
Well, would you look at that? I managed to squeeze some politics in there, after all.
