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Book Review, © Copyright 2000, Jim Loy
This is the story of the 1998 yacht race from Sydney, Australia (where 115 boats started the race) to Hobart in Tasmania, a race that sailed right into a newly forming hurricane (called a cyclone in that part of the world). I could not put this book down. After some rather dull introductory chapters, the book becomes a thrill. There are amazing incidents of luck (a man is washed overboard, only to be swept back on deck as if nothing had happened) and disaster. Then we go from boat to boat, and read their stories. We read a mind-numbing account of howling high winds, and sixty-foot-high waves which dwarf the sailboats. Imagine the sting of a drop of water hitting you in the face at 100 miles per hour. Each boat is flipped upside down, repeatedly. Crew members are thrown about, sometimes breaking bones, sometimes flying off into the ocean. Five boats sank, and only six sailors died; there could easily have been hundreds of deaths. The rescue effort is even more amazing than the storm. 57 people were plucked from the sea by helicopters, in a hurricane. No rescuer died. The last chapter is the nearly complete list of the hundreds of people involved in the rescue effort. That list alone is a moving document to the greatest of heroism. This is one of the very best books I have ever read. It was a thrill.
There are two more books (I haven't read them) on this same race: Knockdown by Martin Dugard and Proving Ground, by G. Bruce Knecht. Another good account of a storm causing disaster in the middle of a yacht race is Fastnet, Force 10 by John Rousmaiere. It is an account of the 1979 Fastnet race, between England and Ireland, in which 15 sailors died.
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