Top to bottom:
Graham Ivor Applin,
Susie Bundegaard
Goodall, Are Wiig,
Shane Freeman,
Antoine Cussot.
Left: climber Alex
Honnold.
Right: Sir Robin
Knox-Johnston
aboard SuhailiNEWS ANALYSIS
A year of solitude
At a recent mountain fi lm festival in London’s old
Union Chapel, I joined a congregation of rock-climbers
who could barely watch the scene unfolding in front of
them on screen. Free-climbing phenomenon Alex
Honnold was scaling an overhanging rock face thousands
of feet high, solo and with no safety line. “Oh, the
exposure,” groaned a fellow climber, covering his eyes. “I
can’t watch this.”
In that word, exposure, lies a link to another extreme
challenge now being planned: the 2018 Golden Globe Race.
In both cases the word implies a giddy separation from
one's comfort zone. It’s not just solitude the participants
will be battling but “a psychological sense of distance due
to being unprotected". It’s the prospect of sailing over the
horizon alone into the desolate Southern Ocean with no
guarantee of return.
All the 30 participants (places are available only on the
waiting list now) agree that sailing will be the least part of
the challenge when they set off from Falmouth to go solo
and non-stop around the world, in a 50-year echo of the
original race won by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston. In fact, at
a lunch and rules meeting held in London’s Little Ship
Club this December, they could hardly begin to describe
the enormity of what lies ahead, although that task, still
more than two years in the future, must still have seemed
blissfully abstract in the setting of sandwich platters and
jokes over the sometimes bizarre rules.
For Briton Graham Ivor Applin, 52, just old enough to
have watched the triumphant returns of Chichester, Rose
and Knox-Johnston with his father back in the 1960s, the
hardest thing will be restructuring his architecture
business and family life to allow a year out. He is currently
looking for a suitable boat and hoping for a Holman-designed
Bowman 36.
For 26-year-old British contestant Susie Bundegaard
Goodall, the only woman in the race, the challenge is to
fi nd a boat; she’d love a Rustler 36, but would settle for a
Nicholson 32. She’s also taken the emotional challenge
seriously, running through the range of feelings she might
experience and formulating a playlist of feelgood songs in
reply to them. Only this playlist won’t be on her iPod, but on
cassette, as befi ts the ‘pre-1970 tech’ rule of the race.
Perhaps one of the grizzled old men around her will
remind her to take a Biro too, to save batteries for
rewinding and fast-forwarding.
Neither Graham nor Susie seems an obvious
candidate for such a challenge, neither so apparently
tough as the likes of Knox-Johnston, Ridgway or Blyth,
but appearances are deceiving. Susie teaches off shore
sailing for a living, although her longest solo passage so
far is, by her own admission, “across the Solent”.
Graham, over the years, has sailed 10,000 miles solo.
Norwegian Are Wiig, 56, has a quiet weatherbeaten
demeanour that suggests implacability. His 40 years
of sailing include becoming the fi rst Norwegian to
complete an international solo yacht race (the 1988
OSTAR). He will sail his OE32 double-ender.
Shane Freeman, 59, of Melbourne is full of sunny
Aussie charm. His interest started when he read Peter
Nichols’ A Voyage for Madmen. He describes the
challenge as “like none other”. He’s a fairly
experienced sailor, but one whose longest solo
passage is just 20 miles. His 700-mile bike ride across
the Australian Simpson Desert, and 600-mile walk from
the south to the north of Spain are testament to his
hardiness. He will be sailing his Tradewind 35 Mushka.
Antoine Cussot, a Frenchman resident in Norway,
explains that in France one is either the “Moitessier or
Tabarly type”, the former being adventurous, the latter
competitive; Cussot is a Moitessier man. “Sailing is just
an excuse,” he says although he is a professional yacht
skipper. His other adventures have included hiking from
Istanbul to Sudan and sailing down the Nile.
Other entrants include 70-year-old French veteran
Jean Luc Van Den Heede whose achievements include
podium fi nishes in two Vendée Globes and two BOC
Around Alone races, as well as the world record for a
west-about solo non-stop circumnavigation. He will
sail a Rustler 36. Based on experience, he would have
to be bookie's favourite; but a race like this tests parts
of a person that would otherwise remain unexamined for
a lifetime. Speculation would be folly.Steff an Meyric Hughes meets entrants in the Golden Globe Race 2018