Poet of Peril - Review

National Review, May 17, 1999 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr.

Mr. Buckley's new novel,The Redhunter: A Novel based on the Life and Times of Senator Joe McCarthy, will be published in June.

Godforsaken Sea: Racing the World's Most Dangerous Water, by Derek Lundy (Algonquin, 312 pp., $22.95)

This is the story of a single-handed sailboat race sponsored by the French. In 1996, 16 racers (14 men, 2 women) set out on the biennial race organized by Vendee Globe, but tracked, this time out, by Canadian journalist Derek Lundy. The distance to go, 27,000 miles, time at sea, approximately 15 weeks. The course: From the starting line (at Les Sables-d'Olonne), head south, go around Antarctica clockwise, then head back to Les Sables to the finish line.

There are considerable technological amenities on board each boat. A Geographical Positioning Systems unit, of course. ("Sextant navigation is as obsolete today as the astrolabe, except for antiquarian enthusiasts who keep it up as a hobby, like riding on steam trains.") A radar, especially useful for detecting "bergs" (icebergs) and "growlers" (small icebergs), on those reassuring occasions when they actually show up on the screen. A fax gives the racers continual weather maps and permits outgoing and incoming communication, when it is working. A radio allows communication to Vendee Globe headquarters, to the boats' commercial sponsors, and to home and friends. The EPIRBs (two are required) are emergency radio devices that disclose the geographical position of a doomed vessel. By definition, there has to be enough food on board for four or five months; as for water, the sailors anticipate enough rainwater to eke out life from what they brought aboard from Les Sables. ("The sea's saltiness makes its water as undrinkable as sand. Saint-Exupery describes how, in the desert, the stranded flyer would first drink his urine, perhaps a little blood, then gasoline or diesel fuel, and, finally, battery acid. Any liquid to stave off the body's desiccation.") If there is no rain, there is a hand-pump desalinator. One thousand strokes will give you one cup of water.

What do these racing boats look like? "I had to admit they were elegant-but as machines, like certain cars or airplanes or weapons. I thought they were ugly boats. I liked overhangs, sheerlines, tumblehomes, a little deck camber, and a sweet turn to the bilge-all the old design techniques that made a traditional sailboat beautiful, and seaworthy as well."

But Lundy got used to them. He contemplated "the ideas and criteria their designers had used" before he could appreciate "their own peculiar beauty. A little like coming to see the appeal of cubism if you are a realism kind of guy."

"The weird boats had safety features. Safety at sea is its own aesthetic. I came to like these racing machines as boats. I like the delicate gull-like dimple they made on the water's surface with their minimal underbody, so unlike the traditional boat's heavy, intrusive penetration into the water. I like the more restrained and subtle curves around the edges of the straight-up-and-down bow and the chopped transom. I especially liked the way they looked as if they were allowing themselves to be temporarily and grudgingly held back by shorelines and the proximity of harbor breakwalls, before taking exuberant, speedy flight."

Well, then, what is it like when you get to the dread Southern Ocean, in which the sailors will spend the longest part of their journey?

One problem is sleep. "Eventually, single-handers have to block out the racket to get some sleep. It seems inconceivable. You're doing the right things: smoking down waves at 20 or 25 knots; stuffing the bow into the wave ahead; running with the low that's creating the big seas; keeping your speed up close to that of the waves. It's dark, no moon in the usual low cloud cover, only the phosphorescent curl of the breaking waves, maybe rain or snow, perhaps a few bergs or growlers about, spray driving back right past the stern, solid water regularly sweeping the deck, the boat at a 45-degree angle down some of the bigger five-or-six-story high waves, the high-decibel noise. And in the middle of all that, the sailor crawls into one of the berths, wedges into it behind a canvas leecloth to avoid getting pitched across the cabin, and goes to sleep."

The camaraderie of the crazy adventurers ordains that no matter the adverse odds, if you capsize, the nearest sailor will attempt a rescue mission. On one such occasion, the Britisher Pete Goss turned his boat around and headed upwind the 160 miles where Raphael Dinelli's EPIRB had marked the spot of the capsize. "The mast came up very slowly and grudgingly out of the water, and the boat began to move to windward. Goss found that he could sail at five or six knots about 80 degrees off the wind. Remember what this is like: the five-or-six- story-high waves, some even higher; the topping crests, two stories or so high, with their tons of avalanching water moving at 30 miles an hour; the wind lulling in the troughs of the waves as the sea to windward blocks it, the boat losing speed and steerageway; the long, steep-angled climb to the wave top, the wind increasing in force as the boat climbs until, on the crest, the full force of wind accelerates the boat down the fifty-foot slope of the wave into the next trough. Goss couldn't open his eyes to windward and it was difficult to breathe. The noise was unrelenting and deafening, at a decibel level approaching that of a nearby jet engine. In gusts, the wind blew well into the range of hurricane force, and Aqua Quorum and her skipper endured the full strength of every knot of it."