Around the World Singlehanded

By Peter Stoler

Sixteen skippers begin 27,000-mile voyage "To young men contemplating a voyage I would say go."

Joshua Slocum offered that advice after returning in 1898 from a solo three-year voyage around the world in his 36-ft. 9-in. Spray. Last week 16 sailors from eight countries (five Americans, three Britishers, three Frenchmen, a New Zealander, an Australian, a Japanese, a South African and a Czech) followed the great Yankee skipper's advice. As a gunshot cracked across Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay to signal the start, each sailor turned his stern on the plush attractions of old Newport, his bow toward the starting line off Goat Island and the wild Atlantic, and his thoughts to the challenge upon which he was embarking. Then each crossed the starting line and began a 27,000-mile competitive voyage that should bring the winner, tired and shaggy, back to The Newport in the late spring of 1983.

The race is the BOC Challenge, named for its sponsor, the London-based BOC Group, manufacturers and marketers of industrial gases and welding products. Singlehanded sailing is not new. Britain's Sunday newspaper the Observer used to sponsor a contest called OSTAR, the Observer Singlehanded Transatlantic Race; solo sailors have crossed both the Atlantic and the Pacific in boats as small as 10 ft. Others, including Britain's redoubtable Sir Francis Chichester, have raced around the world from England and back. But the BOC Challenge is the first singlehanded around-the-world race to begin and end in the U.S., and in the same port that hosts the America's Cup Race.

Most sailing contests have offered the winners nothing more tangible than an engraved silver plate for their lonely pains. But the new event will award a total of $100,000 worth of prizes, with $25,000 going to the first boat in each of the race's two classes to cross the finish line.

The race will also be the most grueling test of nautical know-how imaginable. There will be four legs with a week's rest required at the end of each. The solo sailors must first cross the Atlantic to Cape Town, South Africa. From there, the small boats must follow a course that will take them over the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean and on to Sydney, Australia. The third leg of the journey spans the South Pacific from Sydney to Cape Horn and then to Rio de Janeiro, while the fourth will bring those skillful and fortunate enough back to Newport. "It's not a sprint, it's a decathlon," says Race Director Jim Roos, property manager of Goat Island and one of the contest's principal organizers. "This is probably the World Series of sailing."

His statement is not briny hyperbole. The route includes the legendary "Roaring Forties," those southern latitudes where no land mass breaks the force of the winds and waves can crest at 120 ft. The sailors must also cross the doldrums of the middle Atlantic, with its sudden dangerous squalls and alternate dead calms. The vast emptiness of the Pacific will provide the stiffest psychological test. "This sailor does it all," adds Roos. "He navigates his boat, he handles the sails, he cooks. He's got to be able to sew sails and make repairs." The race was to have included two women, but they had to drop out for lack of financial backing.

The sailors seem up to their challenge. Desmond Hampton, 41, a handsome London real estate broker, has chartered the 56-ft. ketch Gipsy Moth V from the family of the late Sir Francis Chichester. Hampton's only companion will be a tiny stuffed koala bear presented to him for good luck by his daughter. Guy Bernardin, 37, a French business executive who will skipper the 38-ft. Ratso II, accepts the loneliness of the long-distance sailor. "For a race such as this," he says, "you must clear out all the responsibilities in your life. Anything can happen. You must clear your mind from all problems, even from your family." Tony Lush, 33, whose 54-ft. ketch Lady Pepperell is sponsored by the textile-manufacturing company, has taken a leave from his job as chief of laboratory testing at Hunter Marine of Alachua, Fla. Tom Lindholm, 57, of Hidden Hills, Calif., has left his law practice in the hands of his partner and son to take the helm of his 41-ft. sloop Driftwood. Dan Byrne, 53, of Santa Monica, Calif., is relying on his wife Patricia to provide shore support; she intends to meet him and his 40-ft. Fantasy in every port.

To be eligible, each contestant and boat had to complete a 1,000-mile solo voyage, a requirement that posed no problem to Frenchman Philippe Jeantot, who has already logged 25,000 solo miles. The weeks before the start were spent stocking provisions and spare parts, checking out radios (each sailor will be required to report his position weekly), and adjusting the self-steering gear that will allow captains a few hours' sleep a day.

David White, 38, worked furiously to get his 66-ft. Gladiator fine-tuned for the race, lamenting that he had too much to do. "I don't like it," he said. "It's the least prepared I've been for anything." Japanese Entrant Yukoh Tada made preparations of a far different nature. He had a Buddhist monk come to the dockside and bless his boat.

Fatigue is one problem all will face, but each man has his special fears. Richard Konkolski, 37, a rugged, bearded Czech, feels that the ice and fog encountered in rounding Cape Horn will be the most difficult challenge for him and his 44-ft. sloop Nike II. Britain's Richard Broadhead, at 29 the youngest contender, thinks that going over the side of his 52-ft. cutter Perseverance of Medina in the tropics would be the worst thing that could happen. "In the rough southern ocean you wouldn't last a minute," is his bleak forecast. "But in the tropics you'd stick around until the sharks came and got you." Paul Rodgers, 37, of London, whose 55-ft. Spirit of Pentax is the narrowest boat in the race, has some daunting memories: he was leading the 1980 OSTAR when his boat was rammed by a whale and forced to withdraw.

The greatest trial the sailors will face, however, is loneliness. Solo sailors since Slocum's days have written of the depressions and hallucinations that solitude can bring on. Many lone navigators report seeing islands and reefs that do not exist on the charts, and most find themselves, at one time or another, holding long conversations with imaginary passengers and crew.

None of these challenges seems to faze the solo seamen who, prize money or not, set sail around the world in the same spirit that George Leigh Mallory climbed Everest--"because it is there." Broadhead has no worries about spending endless hours with only the elements and the creatures of the ocean as his companions. "I rather like to be alone," he says. "Free time? What free time? I will sail, navigate and sleep."

Australia's Neville Gosson, 55, seems even more insouciant at the helm of his 53-ft. aluminum cutter Pier I. His biggest concern, says the gray, balding real estate developer from the island continent Down Under, "is eating my own cooking. I'm the world's worst cook. '' --By Peter Staler. Reported by Catherine Callahan/Newport, R.I.

With reporting by Catherine Callahan

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