Sailing Past the Horizon

Intrepid sailor and journalist G. Bruce Knecht, the author of Hooked: Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish and The Proving Ground: The Inside Story of the Sydney to Hobart Race, writes in the May 24 Wall Street Journal [subs. only] about the recent valor of a bunch of young sailors in a big race.

Life. Not for sissies. Engaged, with honor, courage, and preparation, exilarating even to hear about. There's intelligence, then there's "safety."  No one gets out in one piece anyway, we can only hope for painless, blameless, and the peace of being in our high-hearted destiny.

Hans Horrevoets - 1974 - 2006

People who do not know much about ocean racing, which is rarely covered in the mainstream press, were probably surprised to discover that sailing, for all its beauty and seeming effortlessness, can be so dangerous. ...

Mr. Horrevoets died early Thursday. In 30 knots of wind, he had been manipulating a line that controlled the spinnaker, an enormous, balloon-like sail that is used for downwind sailing, which was driving his boat toward Britain, then 1,300 miles away. Fifteen-foot waves were regularly crashing over the deck, but shortly after 2 a.m., the bow bore into a steep wave. It was probably bigger than the others, but it was invisible as it approached. Tons of water crashed over the deck. When the yacht emerged, the spinnaker was flapping wildly. The skipper, Sebastien Josse, who was at the wheel, saw that no one was handling the line anymore.

"Where's Hans -- where's Hans?" Mr. Josse screamed. Then he added: "Man overboard -- everyone on deck!"

In the harrowing moments that followed, the boat's young crew -- Mr. Horrevoets was 32, the only crewman over 30 -- appears to have done everything right. Mr. Josse had pressed the Man Overboard button to record the boat's coordinates; a life preserver and position-marking devices were thrown into the water. Given the wind and waves, the sails had to be dropped and the engine turned on before Mr. Josse could turn the boat around, 1.6 miles after Mr. Horrevoets disappeared. The crew then commenced a search, aided by the global positioning system and spotlights. Miraculously, they spotted Mr. Horrevoets 40 minutes later and pulled him aboard shortly after that. But it was already too late.

Despite the loss of a crew member, the navigator of the ABN Amro Two said, 'We are determined to cross the finish line.'

.....The kids were obviously having a rough time as Mike Sanderson, ABN Amro One's skipper, stepped off his boat in Portsmouth, England. "What happened to Hans destroyed all of us," he said. But before the night was over he also recognized the magnitude of his achievement. "It really is my childhood dream," he said. "This is my Olympic gold medal, this is my climbing Mount Everest. It's what I've always wanted to do."

Incidentally, they also rescued another, competing, crew in the middle of a storm on the way back.