44
a
ugus
t/september201
9cruisingwo
rld
.co
mNew Zealand was like paradise. We landed
in Rio de Janeiro during Carnival.”
In 1979, he skippered the Swan 65
ketch Independent Endeavour to fi rst place
in the Parmelia Race that went from
Plymouth, England, via Cape Town, to
Fremantle, Western Australia. It was a
commemorative event that celebrated the
founding of the Swan River Colony. He
then hitchhiked across to Sydney to join
the new Frers Maxi Bumble Bee 4 in the
afterguard, and they were fi rst to fi nish in
that year’s Sydney Hobart yacht race.
The siren’s call to race around the world
continued, but it wasn’t all smooth sailing.
The scariest moment was aboard the maxi
yacht Drum in the 1985 Fastnet Race, as
Skip’s crew prepared for the upcoming
Whitbread Race, one month later. He was
hired to skipper Drum by the lead singer
of Duran Duran, Simon Le Bon. About
100 miles after the start of the Fastnet,
the keel snapped away from the hull. The
boat rolled upside down, with several
of the crew, including Le Bon, trapped
inside. He described what it was like:
“The capsize on Drum was the only time
at sea I thought I was going to lose my
life. But that lasted for only a few seconds,
when I realized the hull, without the keel,
would not sink.” Drum was salvaged and
repaired, and the yacht completed the
Whitbread over the next nine months.
He went on to write a book about the
race titled One Watch at a Time: Around the
World With Drum on the Whitbread Race.
Skip’s other Whitbread Races might
not have been so frightening, but they
certainly were challenging, maybe even
bizarre. In the 1989 - 90 Whitbread, Skip
began as the co-skipper on the fi rst-ever
Soviet entry, Fazisi. Sadly, the Russian
co-skipper committed suicide after
the fi rst leg to Uruguay. This tragedy is
explained in depth in Skip’s book about
the experience, Fazisi: The Joint Venture. It
was an interesting time in world politics
because the race was taking place at the
time the Soviet Union was breaking up.
Certainly the turmoil back home had
a profound effect on the Soviet sailors.
Fazisi was an odd design, and had only
4 feet of headroom down below. Thanks
to Skip’s leadership, the yacht fi nished the
round-the-world race safely.
But even before that last round-the-
world race in 1990, Skip was thinking
laterally. In 1986 and 1987, along with
two former Drum crewmates, he built
a 54-foot, steel-hulled expedition sloop
with a lifting keel and rudder. The boat
was named Pelagic. The name is a Greek
word that means “relating to or being on
the open sea.”
Few yachts were sailing around
Antarctica at the time, and that’s wherePelagic headed. After two seasons making
commercially sponsored expeditions
to the Antarctic Peninsula and South
Georgia, combining mountaineering and
fi lmmaking, in 1991, Skip, along with a
few French colleagues, pioneered the
Southern Ocean charter business.
But still the racing life beckoned.
Working with French sailor/entrepreneur
Bruno Peyron, Skip co-skippered the
80-foot maxi catamaran Commodore
Explorer for a three-summer Pacifi c basin
promotional tour for the millennial event
the Race, which took place in 2001.
For the Race, he co-skippered the
110-foot max cat Innovation Explorer to
a second-place fi nish, sailing nonstop
around the world in 64 days.
I sailed with Skip on two expeditions:Channel, and for a six-week trip in 1996
down the Antarctic Peninsula during the
austral summer, when the ice recedes. Such
long trips take considerable preparation.
My plan was to produce a series of docu-
mentaries on the expeditions for ESPN.
The premise of the fi lms was to juxtapose
the land and the sea, or sailing and
climbing, in an extreme environment. As
I mentioned, Alex Lowe was the climber,
and I (and Skip, of course) was the sailor.
We found each other’s respective
sports pretty hard to practice. Alex had
never sailed before, and I had never done
any serious climbing. We had two top
cameramen aboard—Mike Audick from
Virginia and Alun Hughes from Wales—
plus a great director, Jamie Reynolds,
from ESPN. Every fi lming sequence was
hard work but great fun because Skip was
organized and understood the region.
Back then, large-scale charts were pretty
unreliable, and really detailed areas and
anchorages were nonexistent. Over the
years, Skip had created his own detailed
book of hand-drawn sketches—what the
early Dutch navigators called a “rutter.”
During our expeditions, we climbed
mountains, scaled ice walls, explored icecaves, visited abandoned research stations,
marveled at the sea life, and dealt with
weather that ranged from calm to nasty.
At one point, we got stuck in a small cove
surrounded by icebergs for two days. The
wind blew more than 40 knots the entire
time. It was the fi rst time in my life that I
got weary listening to the relentless winds.
Skip spent the time making repairs to the
boat, reading and playing chess. He doesn’t
allow card playing on board because he says
people don’t talk to each other.
At one point, I noticed he was reading
Rudyard Kipling’s Kim. A week later,
he was still reading the same book, so I
jokingly asked, “Haven’t you fi nished that
book yet?” His answer was very telling:
“I am reading it twice to check to see if I
have any memory loss.”
“Whoa,” I thought, “that seems kind
of deep.” But, that’s Skip Novak, always
testing and thinking.
When asked what his occupation
actually is, Skip will laugh and say, “I’m
a professional boat captain.” In my view,
that narrow description does not describe
the range of his talents. He has led expedi-
tions for nearly 30 years in high latitudes.
In 2003 he built his second expedition
vessel, Pelagic Australis, a 74-footer, also
with a lifting keel, and operates both
boats during the austral summer season.
Over the years he has supported count-
less fi lm crews to the region. His boats
feature well-stocked libraries of books
about the wildlife, topography and history
of the region—with some political philos-
ophy mixed in. With all that literature, I
discovered one of Skip’s secret passions is
reading stacks of The Adventures of Tintin
comic books about the adventures of a
boy and his dog.
During my time sailing with him, I
wondered what Skip thought of the early
days of exploration at the high latitudes.
His answer kind of surprised me.
“If I had a choice of living today or
years ago in the age of exploration, I
would have rather lived back then, when
there were areas of the planet which
were still unknown,” Skip replied. “The
days of true geographical exploration are
fi nished, so we have to now explore our
own capabilities.”Gary Jobson is an America’s Cup-winning
tactician, television commentator and CW
editor at large. This story is an excerpt from his
new book (which has been edited for style and
content), Legends of American Sailing: 50
Men and Women Who Have Shaped the
Sport (Nomad Press, White River Junction,
Vermont, 2019). The profi les are drawn from
a series of interviews over a 35-year period.
Proceeds from the sale of the book will benefi t
the National Sailing Hall of Fame.SAILOR PROFILECOURTESYNOMADPRESS