Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ist for one reason and one only - to be broken. They long to pit them-
selves and their vessels against the worst conditions that nature can
summon from its cauldron. They are impelled by the need to explore
the ocean within; to discover how they will cope with weariness,
pain, loneliness and fear. Yet what really drives them is, ultimately,
beyond definition. A few years ago a teenage girl was studying for
her A levels, the first hurdle on her chosen course to becoming a vet.
Yet something inside tormented her with doubt.
I was exhausted and felt pulled in opposite directions. I'd swing
from happiness to misery with frightening speed. I would lie on the
ground and sob . . . I wished I knew the solution. But I couldn't even fig-
ure the problem.
6
It took a bout of glandular fever, during which she lay moodily
watching television coverage of the Whitbread race, to pierce the fog
of uncertainty.
With a feeling of most intense energy and clarity, I suddenly real-
ised that there was another way. In an instant my exam pressures
evaporated. The world was out there, and there was not a shadow of
doubt in my mind that I was ready to take it on . . . The sea was wait-
ing.
7
In 2001, that girl, Ellen MacArthur, now a young woman of
twenty-four, came second in the Vendeóe Globe race and sailed into
the record books as the fastest woman circumnavigator and the
youngest competitor to complete the race.
It was a stunning achievement, in some sense worthy to be set
alongside those of Elcano, Cavendish, Slocum and 'Bully' Forbes. For
all the achievements of modern technology, mountainous seas are
not a whit less frightening nor lee shores less perilous than they
