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Cargando... Godforsaken Sea: The True Story of a Race Through the World's Most Dangerous Waters (1998)por Derek Lundy
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. A truly awe inspiring awful sea. The southern ocean is a both beautiful but awful place to be. Probably the most dangerous place to sail in, especially in boats designed to sail fast primarily down wind to win a race. The chance of drowning is high and chances of rescue are minimal. Not my kind of sailing. The Vendee Globe race is the pinnacle for sailors who want to push their racing skills to the limit. It’s a race around the world in single- man, very high-tech, fast sailboats that stretch technology and human endurance to their limits. The worst part of the 25,000-mile race is the Southern Ocean, where waves reach unimaginable heights and the cold is never ending. Virtually half the race, some 13,000 miles of it takes place in these nightmarish conditions. The 1996-1997 race was typical: of the fourteen men and two women who began the race one disappeared, another had to perform surgery on his own elbow following an injury one (Goss) became an instant and certifiable hero by beating his boat back against the wind to locate and rescue a capsized comrade just before death from exposure would have occurred and three were wrecked. Ironically, all who could, chose to finish the race even if they had been disqualified. The rules prohibit touching land except at the start or the finish. Two of the racers chose to sail back to the start, several thousand miles, for repairs rather than risk disqualifications. Others who were forced to stop for repairs continued on just to be able to finish the race. Lundy intersperses the intense high drama of his race narrative with fascinating insights into the world of the sailors and builders who spent millions preparing for the race. “Visualize a never-ending series of five- or six-story buildings, with sloping sides of various angles. . . moving toward the sailors at forty miles an hour. Some of the time, the top one or two stories will collapse on top of them.” Knockdowns, where a boat is flattened on its side, were common, and just the necessity of bracing against walls to prevent being thrown about was terribly wearing on the skippers. Sleep was so important it became a technical issue. Studies were conducted for many of the skippers to determine just how little sleep they could get by on and what times of day and what length of time were best for short naps. One discovered he could get by on six hours of sleep in a twenty-four hour period and could break it down into periods as short as thirty minutes. That was the theory. In actual practice, most got hardly any sleep at all. So many things could interrupt their sleep. Having to constantly brace oneself against often irregular motions of the boat required the development of new muscles and could be absolutely exhausting. They needed constantly to fix things that broke. The boats were all mono-hulled and had a heavy keel that extended below the bottom and would act like a pendulum, righting the boat even after it capsized — in theory — although those who had been through it said their nervous systems were never quite the same again. This movement could also put tremendous strain on the keel and the hull. The faster the boat, the less likely it is to capsize — operating, I suspect, similarly to a bicycle or motorcycle. They are thinner and have less surface area for the waves to pound on. They also right themselves easier. Multi-hulled boats are more stable inverted (but less likely to capsize), so skippers of these craft will cut hatches in the bottom so they can get out should one capsize. They also learned to surf down the huge waves at an angle, sometimes going twenty-five to thirty knots down the waves. It’s important not to exceed the maximum speed permitted by the autopilot, because if it loses control all hell breaks loose. Constantly monitoring how to attack each enormous wave at just the right angle can become very tiring. Pitch-poling (remember Perfect Storm?) Where a boat goes bow over stern is a real danger. Noise is another problem. The boats are built of very strong carbon fiber that has great strength and lightness but transmits sound very well. The noise of waves hitting the hull or even just rushing by could be deafening and took time to get used to it. It’s a miracle that any of them made it back given the horrible weather conditions, yet they seem to thrive on the danger and lack of sleep, all vowing to return again for the next Vendee Glove. A wild ride for us armchair sailors. Since I write naval fiction, I read A LOT of sea stories since that is the only way to get a good sense of what it is like to be in a terrible storm or just being at sea which, judging from diaries and letters, is often boring, even in wartime. This book is about a handful of people whose sanity one must call into question: the men and women who sail, by themselves, through the most dangerous waters in the world in the Vendee Globe race which lasts at least four months. For much of the time, they are in waters so stormy they can't see anything but the giant waves which surround them and reach the heights of large buildings. I would be scared enough to pee in my pants. Almost every one of these boats not only gets knocked down on a regular basis, that is the force of the wind on the sail simply knocks the boat over one hundred eighty degrees and if one is lucky, the weight of the keel brings the boat back up. Suffice it to say that this book is beautifully written, the descriptions of the sea in all of its most violent states are breathtaking. The author, Derek Lundy, is a sailor and author although he doesn't participate in these kinds of races. Like any good story, this one is told through the eyes of those who were there and we feel their fear, triumph, and courage. I've read this book four times. I wish I knew Mr. Lundy. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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"The best book ever written about the terrifying business of single-handed sailing . . . As tight and gripping as The Perfect Storm or Into Thin Air" (San Francisco Chronicle). Godforsaken Sea is the hair-raising account of the world's most demanding, dangerous, and deadly sailing race--following the field of the 1996-1997 Vendée Globe through a grueling four-month circumnavigation of the earth, most of it through the terror of the Southern Ocean. Among the sixteen sailors are the gallant Brit who spends days beating back against the worst seas to save a fellow sailor; the Frenchman who bothers to salvage only a bottle of champagne from his broken and sinking boat; the sailor who comes to love the albatross that trails her for months, naming it Bernard; the sailor who calmly smokes a cigarette as his boat capsizes; and the Canadian who, hours before he disappears forever, dispatches this message: If you drag things out too long here, you're sure to come to grief. Bringing to life hurricane-force winds, six-story waves, icebergs, and deafening noise--and blending maritime history, ocean science, and literary allusions--this true story lays bare the spirit of the men and women who push themselves to the outer limits of human endeavor--even if it means never returning home. "Explores how and why humans feel drawn to the extreme risks and almost inevitable disasters that single-handedly sailing the Southern Ocean entails. . . . Mr. Lundy not only makes stirring narrative drama but also draws the lineaments of an archetypal hero, a human driven by fear, addicted to adrenaline, in need of the edge." --The New York Times "Godforsaken Sea is one of the best books ever written about sailing. . . . Lundy's knowledge of sea lore and history is rich, his pace perfect, his intelligence full of energy. He differentiates each sailor with a novelist's touch." --Time No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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