Boxing Day at Rottnest Island

Just offshore from Fremantle is Rottnest Island, so called because the original Dutch visitors mistook the small and numerous indigenous marsupial for rats. A Boxing Day tradition here in Fremantle and Perth, originating 14 years ago, is for boaters to gather in one of the bays of Rottnest Island and raft up for a day of sun, alcohol, and partying. Twenty of us from the Pirates Backpackers headed out join in.





The scope of the spectacle is hard to capture in photos. Only a fraction of the boats there in the perhaps ten groupings of boats could be captured in any one photo.

Pirate's Christmas

Christmas Day feast and Secret Santa gift exchange at the Fremantle Pirates Backpackers

The calm before the storm

It seems all but certain that Robin will arrive some time on the 28th. Back when I bought my airline ticket to come to Fremantle, Alex Thomson's team told me they were planning on being here on December 4th. I thought it would be safe to add a few more days and arrive on December 7th since I didn't expect Robin to be moving quite as fast as the a race favorite like Alex.

Little did I imagine how safe a margin I established for myself. I'll have had a full three weeks to bide my time here in Fremantle. No complaints, however. I've quite enjoyed this time to explore and get to know a town I'll return to almost exactly a year from now when my own sailing race is underway.

The rest of Robin's team, some of them paid and some of them volunteers like myself, have arrived in these last few days and are sleeping off their jet-lag in a nearby house. Robin has been able to transmit by e-mail a list of details and damage that his boat has been subjected to in this 14,000 mile leg of the race, so a rather tight schedule and a list of objectives has been drawn up for what we want to accomplish in the short period we have between Robin's arrival and before the race restarts on January 14th.

For the first week, I've been assigned to Kiwi Dave, an energetic and amazingly knowledgeable 22 year old New Zealander who helped us quite a bit in Bilbao. He works for the internationally known and respected sailmaking company; Northsails. We'll be working as a team to repair the extensive damage to all of Robin's sails. This involves wrestling all day long with huge and heavy sails in a sail loft outside of town, working on a table the size of a small plot of land and using an industrial strength sewing machine. Look at the size of sails in the photo above (taken in Bilbao's harbour) and when you consider that only two of Robin's collection of seven sails are deployed, you can begin to imagine the scope of this job.

I jumped at the chance to take on this task, for not only will learning sail repair make me more valuable to my own upcoming sailing race, it also relates to taking care of the sail material used on both of my hang gliders.

These current days over the Christmas weekend, then, are my last few days of repose, I imagine. Once Robin's here, it will be 17 straight days of 12-15 hours of work a day to get him ready to sail again. Our goal is to give him a boat in better condition than the one he left Bilbao with.

I've scheduled one last day of surfing (my sixth so far) on the 27th at the nearby surf school. I'll follow it with a 90 minute massage (my sixth since I've arrived) that evening and be ready for the storm to hit on the 28th with Robin's arrival.

As for the holidays, I'll be celebrating them with my fellow travelers (Brits, Dutch, Danes, Germans, and one American-me) that I've met at my backpacker's hostel here in Fremantle ($18 a night!!).


Holly, a gregarious and delightful Brit who turned 22 just last Tuesday, has taken on the task of being our social secretary and has arranged some holiday activities for this weekend. On the 25th we'll be having our own Christmas feast that will include swapping simple gifts with one fellow traveler whose name we've picked out of a Christmas stocking. I've drawn "Kirsty" but I've yet to figure out who she is among the 55 inhabitants with whom I share this dorm-like hotel (we sleep six to a room, men and women mixed together in rooms and bathrooms).

Wingnut

Anyone who knows me will wonder how a life-long lover of all forms of flight ended up so immersed in the world of sailing.

To me, it all makes sense. I've noticed two recurring themes in my life; the enjoyment of playful motion enabled by the harnessing of natural forces (sailplanes, hang gliding, whitewater kayaking, mountain biking, sailing) and savoring being comfortable amidst potentially hostile environments (all forms of flight, whitewater kayaking, scuba diving, high altitude mountaineering, and now open ocean sailing).

First and foremost, as long as I can recall I've always been captivated by the concept of flight. While other boys made drawings of cars and tanks, I drew airplanes. I initially learned to fly in sailplanes as a teenager, then a few years later soloed in a powered aircraft. As an adult I even took up falconry, arising from both a desire to witness close up the flight of large birds and also from the experiences of my youth when I would fly alone in a sailplane wingtip to wingtip with red-tailed hawks, even though I was still too young to have a driver's license.

Following this collection of fairly recent photographs of my natural force/unwelcoming environment activities, you'll find three pictures of me in the cockpits of sailplanes during college and high school. I've just recently rediscovered them while rummaging through my storage unit in Florida a few weeks ago for things I wanted to take back to England with me.

The first was taken during the spring break of my junior year at college, when I was 20. The one further below was taken during the previous year's spring break.

I went to the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, an hour or so south of the Wyoming border. During spring break each year I'd drive down to Colorado Springs to the Black Forest Gliderport (which doesn't exist any more) to take part in a Wave Camp; seven days of intense flying where the entire staff and resources of the airport were focused exclusively on trying to get pilots into the standing wave of air created by Pikes Peak when the conditions were right. Before me, a few pilots had taken a ride on this wave to just above 40,000 ft (the world sailplane altitude record stood at 46,261 ft at the time from a wave off the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California). I never got over 20,000. Even so, before those wave camps I'd never been above 6000 ft so I was delighted with this. Also, cruising for hours on end above Pikes Peak with an oxygen mask clamped to my face with the full range of the Colorado Rockies spread out in front and below me was one great way to spend my spring break.

A flight lasting 3:17 in my junior year at college remains the longest flight I've ever had in a glider.

The picture at the very end of this text was taken a few months after my 16th birthday, once I already had both my pilot's and driver's license. I started to learn to fly when I was 14 and soon soloed. Though one must be 16 to solo a powered aircraft, as the engine adds so many more options and therefore responsibility, you can solo a glider at 14 since it's much simpler. Not long after I soloed the low performance two place trainer, the flying club I was a member of bought a high performance single place sailplane. Eagerly I asked about flying it, only to be informed that the officers of the club had decided that only fully licensed pilots could fly it, something I wouldn't be able to attain until my 16th birthday.

Being 14 or 15 and wanting to fly at an airport 40 miles away posed a few limitations. On weekends I could go with my father and on weekdays during the summer, I could sometimes get my brother to drive me out and patiently wait while I flew a few times (he was far more interested in cars than sailplanes).

I wanted a better sense of independence, however, so on one occasion I borrowed a friend's bike and left my house at 6:00 a.m., arriving at the airport exhausted and soaked in sweat at 10:00 a.m. I swam in the pond to cool off, then had myself towed by the airport's owner (an airline pilot and soaring enthusiast) for a few flights beneath the growing cover of cumulus clouds. I'd ride the lift up to cloud base, push the nose down to increase speed and sink rate to the balance point where the rising air beneath the cloud matched my sink rate. In this state I wouldn't be sucked up into the cloud and could spend an hour or so scooting around a hundred feet beneath the floor of the cool and shadowing cloud, hearing nothing but the soft hiss of air.

It's hard not to be content with life when you are 14 or 15 and learning that this is what being alive is about. Wanting something of the same sense of self-joy for my daughter, I took her to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina to learn how to hang glide when she was nine years old. Of the six students in her initial class (five adults and my nine year old daughter) she was judged the only one capable enough to fly off the top of the 100 foot dune at the end of the class. Such is the adaptability of youth...and such is the capability of an open mind (her youth prevented her from over-analyzing the process of controlling the hang glider, as did all of her adult classmates). These were the opportunities and good fortune I had as well as I grew up, learning how good life was.

The bike ride home, however, was not as joyful, though certainly as much of a character building experience as the joy of being a 15 year old pilot might have been. In my adult years I've become an avid biker and routinely take off on rides of 60-90 miles with friends. At that point in my life, however, the second 40 mile ride home amidst the heat of July in northern Virginia was the pinnacle of my athletic achievement and sense of perseverance until I ran my first marathon ten years later.

A few months after this biking/flying adventure, I had arranged for a FAA inspector to be at our club's airfield on my 16th birthday (getting a driver's license would wait until a week later). Once I passed the test, I turned to the club president and handed him my handwritten temporary certificate. "NOW I get to fly it," I said. He laughed, having expected no less, and started talking me through the aircraft's unique properties and procedures as we walked over to where it was tied down.

Even now, so many years later, I think of this moment as a pivotal one in my life, one seemingly so essentially a part of the whys and wherefores that have created my personality and self-concept. It's a rather heady thing for a 16 year old to strapping himself into a single place glider, knowing that this was essentially an intellectual exercise in survivability. Since I would not experience the unique feel of this high performance aircraft until it was already committed to flight, it was up to me and my training, skill, and most of all my brain to adapt in time. Unlike a car, where one can just pull over and stop if things don't feel right, an aircraft of any type always demands more planning, foresight, and anticipation.

It all seemed very doable and I wasn't so much concerned as I was eager to get on with the experience of being in a tightly wrapped cockpit with a slender white wing at each shoulder instead of a stepping into the big bathtub that our training aircraft was, its wings seemingly as wide as mattresses.

I was climbing out of the family station wagon and into a Corvette, so to speak.

My 16th birthday was the culmination of a remarkable period in my life, something that certainly has much to do with the joy and contentment I've found all through my life. Imagine being a 14 year old, alone in a sailplane three thousand feet in the air, and seeing below you a school bus unloading a group of kids who, as likely or not, included many your own age. What were their interests, I remember wondering when this happened. What would they do if they knew that they, too, could be where I was? Because of the club I was a member of, the expense of flying was nothing that any weekend job couldn't cover. And yet here I was, feeling so unique, so enviable, so happy with life as it was.


Below, I'm seated in that high performance single in the picture below, taken a few months after my 16th birthday when I was out at the airport to give rides to some friends in the two place trainer.

"HUGO BOSS is gone and Alex is not"

After briefly passing through Orlando, Florida and Northern Virginia after I left England on November 29th, I arrived in Fremantle, Australia on the evening of December 7th.

I’m here to support Sir Robin’s first of only two stops in the Velux 5 Oceans race around the world. The list of competitors has been trimmed down from nine entrants to five. One never made the start. One was not allowed to start, his boat being disqualified on a safety technicality a few days before the race began. More dramatically, only weeks ago one boat sunk and a second has suffered such severe damage a mere six hours after rescuing the sailor who's boat had been taking on water that he, too, was eventually forced to withdraw from the race.

Three days before I arrived, the first sailor, Switzerland's Bernard Stamm had finally arrived in Fremantle. Checking in with the race office after a night's rest, I learned that while the second competitor had arrived in Fremantle the pre-dawn hours that morning, Robin had only moments before past the 4000 miles to go mark. The remaining two competitors were close behind.

Dividing those 4000 miles by a speed Robin was likely to average from that point on, his projected arrival date was Christmas or the day after.

I would have a lot of free time on my hands, it would appear.

Below I've collected a summary of the rescue from the participant's websites. It's rather lengthy but, if you've got the time to read it, it's an amazing human story, especially when you ponder that I'd been having beers with these two guys for weeks in sunny Bilbao. Even back in Gosport, where I live and Alex is based, Alex would often stop by the boatyard where a team of us worked on Robin's boat, offering advice and encouragement and joining us for our typical end of day beer at the local pub.





Alex and Robin have been friends since Alex skippered one of the boat's in Robin's Clipper Ventures Race in 1998. Winning it overall, he became at age 25 the youngest skipper to ever win a round the world race.

Mike Golding's boat is ECOVER. Alex Thomson's boat is HUGO BOSS, both of them under sail side by side in the photo below, taken during an in-harbour race in Bilbao days before the official race start.




If you've got a good broadband connection, the following three videos give you some great footage of the event. Read the account first, then come back and watch the videos in the order presented below.

23/11/2006: Keel failure!
28/11/2006: A dramatic week in
02/12/2006: Land ahoy!

Nov 23th, News release from Alex's webpage

British solo skipper Alex Thomson in trouble in the Southern Ocean

HUGO BOSS keel suffers extreme structural failure

British solo skipper Alex Thomson is in trouble in the Southern Ocean, during leg one of the VELUX 5 Oceans. At approximately 03.30 GMT this morning, his yacht HUGO BOSS was sailing at 18 knots, in 30 knots of wind, when the keel suffered extreme structural failure and the boat capsized. The race office has alerted fourth placed competitor Kojiro Shiraishi (JPN) aboard Spirit of Yukoh, in case Thomson should require rescuing. Thomson is unhurt and is now working with his team to bring the keel under control.

Thomson, one of the favourites in the VELUX 5 Oceans race, was almost neck and neck with second placed Mike Golding (GBR) when the incident happened, with just one nautical mile separating the two boats. He was sailing downwind, around 1000 nautical miles south of Cape Town, South Africa, with three reefs in the mainsail in order to avoid over-powering the boat.

Thomson issued this statement:

“I was in my bunk grabbing a quick power kip when I was suddenly thrown across the cabin as the boat broached. I ran up on deck and went to ease the mainsail but nothing happened. I then went to try and cant the keel, but again nothing happened. By this stage the boat was leaning right over on its side with the spreaders in the water, so I went back down below to look inside the keel box. The section which attaches the rams to the keel had completely snapped off and the keel was swinging freely. I went back up on deck with the boat still on its side. I took all of the sails down and finally the boat righted itself.”

“I can’t believe it, I am absolutely gutted. I have learnt so much already in this race about how hard to push the boat and when to hold back, in order to maintain the right balance between speed and safety. To have a problem with my keel at this critical stage in the race, something which I have no control over, is absolutely devastating.”

Open 60 yachts are some of the fastest and most high-tech yachts in the world, in the case of HUGO BOSS, using hydraulic rams to cant the keel from one side to another in order to increase performance. The keel can be angled 40 degrees into the wind, counterbalancing the yachts’ heeling angle much more effectively than traditional keels.

Thomson is working with his shore team to resolve the problem and a further statement will be issued once more information is available.

Dubbed the ultimate solo challenge, the VELUX 5 Oceans is a 30,000 nautical mile single-handed yacht race, taking the skippers through some of the toughest and most extreme conditions on the planet. Thomson was en route from Bilbao (Spain) to Fremantle (Australia) when he ran into trouble and where the first yachts are expected to arrive around 6 December.

Nov 26th, from Alex's webpage, quoting Mike Golding's webpage after the first paragraph:

It is with huge relief we heard from Alex that he and Mike are safe and well, all things considered! Though they've had plenty to do with rigging up the new much-reduced mast, Mike took some time out to send the following words back to his many followers....

"Since my last Blog things have changed, first my priorities, then my whole race have taken a massive change of direction. During the past 48 hours I have enjoyed the greatest feelings of success and joy at the successful rescue of a fellow competitor and then, just hours later, the crashing despair brought on by a mast failure which effectively puts me out of contention in the Velux 5 Oceans. As I write Ecover is making progress north towards South Africa, probably Cape Town, where we can make a measured assessment of what comes next.

Two days ago on the 23rd Nov the first sign of a change came with the 1020hrs position report. Over the previous 48 hours Ecover and Hugo Boss were making some of the fastest speeds of the race so far with 24hour runs around 450 miles. On Ecover we were seeing regular speeds in excess of 30 kts and our averages were around 20 kts. This is the most stressful sailing humanly possible - the speed is electrifying and the Southern Ocean is the most fearful location. Here the wind and waves have been uninterrupted by land for 15000 miles and this makes it the best place for high speed sailing but also the most terrifying for the sheer hostile and uncontrolled power exerted by the elements. But for us, huge strides were being made on Bernard Stamms lead, all indications were that within the next few days the race, the challenge for overall pole position would be firmly up for grabs. But on seeing this particular position data file, with Alex and Hugo Boss making only 8 kts to my 19 - an intuition told me that things were about to change radically.

I immediately called the race office and asked them to find out what was happening, minutes later they confirmed that there was indeed a problem on Hugo Boss though Alex had not at this time requested any assistance. I told the race office that it was my intention to slow until such time as we could confirm that Alex was indeed OK - I would not normally do this, but something here was not right and at the speeds Ecover was doing we were rapidly putting a big and difficult distance between each other, if I did need to turn around, the job of getting back was getting much harder by the minute.

I put the deep reef in the mainsail, slowing the boat measurably but still averaging over 16kts - then waited. Fifty minutes later David Adams called to tell me things had changed dramatically on Hugo Boss. The keel head had snapped, the keel was swinging uncontrolled in the boat, which was now taking in water - it was just a matter on time before the situation turned from a dangerous one into an potentially fatal one. Alex was now asking for assistance and Ecover was the closest to render it.

I put the phone down, looked at the B&G which was showing that the wind was 42kts, I climbed into the cockpit just as we screamed off huge wave at 25kts and I set about rigging the boat with storm sails to turn around. Twenty minutes later Ecover was crashing through freezing waves at 9 kts on the reciprocal heading - Alex was 90 miles away and we had 5 hours before darkness set in.

Ecover did not enjoy this massive change of direction, the Fleet 77 sat com packed up immediately, next the engine got up to its tricks agin and with the batteries now desperately needing a charge, I was once more buried in the engine bay, covered in diesel as the boat lurched and crashed back wher we had just come to the west. This time I had to fix the problem in a fully reliable manner, the engine would be needed to manoeuvre to get Alex on board and had to be 100% reliable. I ditched all advice, and rigged a jerry can filled with diesel as a gravity feed direct to the HP pump on the engine skipping the fuel pump and secondary filter. The engine ran - and it now ran reliably - at last I could concentrate on preparing the boat and myself for the job of collecting Alex safely.

The wind moderated and headed me as I closed the distance, the sea state did not, if anything the waves got steeper and it became harder and harder to make progress and eventually I ended up with full sail as the ridge passed then began reefing again as the breeze built back to 25kts. We were still not going to quite make the rendezvous in daylight but with accurate and regular information coming through Gringo from the Race Office we moved ever closer together. In the final few miles Alex and I conferred over satphone and radio to make last small navigational adjustments.

Finally out of the blackest night imaginable, a flare shot into the air, in the glow cast down from the scudding low cloud I could see Hugo Boss's mast and was able to pickup his masthead strobe light and finally his deck level nav lights. A transfer was absolutely too dangerous during the night, if during the transfer I lost sight of him, even for a moment - he would be gone. I dropped sail and tried to match his drifting course and speed, Alex slept, I fretted and tinkered with my engine, tested the controls, gathered my rescue kit, coiling down throw lines into buckets and in the end playing Solitaire on the PC - I was nervous about the transfer. At some point, it was clear that Alex may well end up in the water and in 5C temperatures there would be no time for a screw up.

Sunrise was at 0259GMT, I called and woke Alex. we both ate some food and generally got our acts together before he rigged in his survival suit and set himself up for me to come close. The plan was that he would inflate his raft on his leeward side, throw some supplies in and jump in. He would then send a line across to me with his rocket line thrower before letting himself adrift from Hugo Boss. A good basic plan which meant he would never be unattached.

I manuovered Ecover under engine, the controls were stiff - being unused for three weeks but otherwise all seemed OK. I experimented to see if I could drive the bows through the wind and wave - nope - she would no go, I gunned the engine and - Bang!!! - the shear pin between the engine and drive leg failed - now I had a reliable engine but with no ability to drive the propeller. I called Alex and just stopped him from jumping into the raft. Then I did possibly the quickest sheer pin change in history, even reducing the chance of a further failure by pushing the broken piece of pin into the slot and taping to give the whole thing twice the strength. Then we began again

The first part went OK, he was in the raft and in fact he let a painter out so that he was 50 ft behind his boat, I positioned myself to leeward of both the raft and Hugo Boss bringing the boats together would be a full on disaster in the steep waves. He aimed the rocket thrower, I ducked - it looked like he was aiming at me! - but nothing, the rocket line did not work. I grabbed my first pre coiled down line and ran to the rail and did possibility the worst line throw imaginable. I turned and went around again.

This time it looked better I got a line to him but - the throttle/gear control now would not work and I could not kill my speed or control the gearbox for ahead or astern. We dropped the line and I pulled some sail out to make another pass. By now he had dropped his line to Hugo Boss, he could see the danger we would be in if the boat came together and realised that I needed some room to manoeuvre around him without getting any lines in the prop. Hugo Boss slowly headed away to the South looking low in the water but otherwise perfect - a deeply sad sight.

Then I unfurled some headsail and we had another go. This time I got a line on him and he secured the raft but in the process the bows blew down and Ecover began to sail too fast, a big wave started us on a surf. Alex clung on desperately, injuring his hand in the process, he yelled in pain and fright as the raft was being towed at 5/6kts with the rope twisted around his hand. Looking for all the world like a doughnut skier, Alex moving his weight to the backof the raft but the raft still flooded with water - we dropped the line and round I went again.

Perhaps the most bizarre image - which will stay with me - is the sight of Alex alone in his raft, Hugo Boss now a quarter mile away, and in the steep seas the world's largest albatross sitting in the water just feet from Alex - this could have been almost funny - but to me it began to look like a vulture moving in for the kill - this was just not happening....

This time I took off most of the sail and used the engine which was now stuck permanently in 'ahead', leaping below to adjust the throttle setting under the sink and in the very last moment killing the engine completely with the kill switch in the Nav station. But this time the approach was near perfect, the raft arrived on my bows, bounced down the hull, I virtually passed Alex the line which he made fast, I killed the engine and winched him back into the leeward side - we had him!

We hugged as I welcomed him aboard, I apologised for my shabby pickup - " I probably would have failed my Yachtmasters on that one" I said - but we had him - and oh what a fantastic feeling!!!.

We took a couple of photos grabbed his luggage out of the raft - we are not going to starve - and chatted and then chatted some more. The relief from both of us was tangible. As we talked Hugo Boss now a mile away disappeared from view, the boat was taking in water and this morning (25th) we hear that the Sat C stopped transmitting - Hugo Boss has gone forever.

Slowly we set about getting Alex sorted, I cut away his glove and we cleaned and dressed his hand injury which is painful but not too serious. He climbed out of his survival suit, we tidied up, drank some coffee then some more. Then we slowly set about getting moving. I unrolled some headsail, and hoisted some mainsail, aiming the boat back towards Fremantle. Over the next two hours we cruised, talked, drank lots of tea and coffee - in 24 hours we had both been through the mill and back, Alex was and is clearly deeply upset by the loss of his boat - but he was now safe.

I was not about to immediately charge back into the race full throttle - we had enough adrenaline in the past 24 hours to last us a good time yet and the race seemed distant and somewhat less important than what we had just done. Alex was safe.

Six hours after the transfer, Ecover was moving well again, the wind had built to match our reduced sailplan and we were seeing speeds of 15 - 20 knots. Still conditions were such that the boat was very much in control - I loaded the aft ballast and moments later a squall hit us from astern. The wind jumped up from 25kts and sleet and snow accompanied a truly icy blast from Antarctica. The boat healed over to 20 degrees or so as altered the pilot to come down 10, released the vang (which had no load), and moved towards the mainsheet to take the pressure off the boat. Nothing here was unusual in these boats but as I did so my second intuition in 24 hours made me look up the rig - as I did so - the mast tube exploded 1.5m above the main spreader, shards of carbons of carbon scattered and a terrible grinding bang followed. The mast had broken and my competitive Velux 5 Oceans race was over.

We were blown away, in shock, call it what you will, we could not believe all that had just gone down - it was just too bizarre. Instead of rushing headlong into this new development - we ate the meal we had been preparing, rigged to work on deck and set about 12 crushing hours of cutting away the broken sections of Ecovers beautiful mast and setting the boat up to continue sailing. This was mind numbingly hard and disappointing. For me the competitive race is over, for Alex there is the loss of his boat a totally misplaced feeling of guilt. But the work to make the boat safe and sailable remained. Alex volunteered to go aloft and spent a treacherous hour dangling with 20ft of mast crashing around him. More squalls, more snow and an icy deck made working hugely difficult and dangerous. But working together, we achieved what would have ironically been completely impossible alone and as dark descended on an extraordinary 48 hours I hoisted the staysail and we altered our course once more away from Freementle to the North and South Africa.

45 foot of our mast remains in place, the 2 broken upper sections are lashed on deck. We only lost the Code Eco sail and even the mainsail which was at the first reef is undamaged. Everything about this is bizarre. We have stabilised the situation, we are in full control and we are making fair progress north which will improve once we have attached the main and hoisted it to the third reef point. The weather is now foul, 35/40 kts of wind and these icy squalls which have given both of us the first stages of frostbite in our fingers from our labours on deck. We are resting, eating, sleeping and chatting about the future, right now we have few concerns other that the immediate ones.

As for the cause of the failure, we know some facts. No element of the rigging or its attachments to the mast or boat failed. Nothing in our teams preparation of the boat was responsible. We know this because we have all the evidence here - nothing was broken except the tube. The conditions at the time of failure were incomparably small when compared to the loads which were being excerted just 24 hours before when we were clocking of huge milages and sailing on the brink of control. The failure was therefore most likley there in the carbon tube before I collected Alex. It could have happened anywhere, during the first brutal gale in Biscay, in a squall in the Doldrums or when we turned upwind to come get Alex - we won't ever know for sure.

One thing I am sure of right now, we may have lost an expensive mast, we may also have lost our place in this race, but I would not trade any of it for what we have gained in getting Alex off Hugo Boss - right now we might all be looking at a far more tragic outcome than a lump of broken carbon mast.

As for our future in this race, well Gringo and the team are exploring all the possibilities, we have a mast in Southampton, it is possible to ship it but this would take time, we could fly it but this is prohibitivly expensive. For now I think we need to concentrate our thoughs and efforts on getting safely to shore, only then can we make a proper valued judgment on what sensibly comes next.

Even from here in the wastes of the Soutern Ocean we are both touched by the huge outflowing of support and positive wishes we have recieved from all around the world - these are not easy times and we fully appreaciate all the sentiments.

However, when we do get to wherever we choose to go in South Africa - they had better watch out - cause two Angry Bulls are coming to town and its going to get very messy!"

December 3rd, News release from Alex's webpage
CAPE TOWN FINALLY!!
British solo sailors finally reach Cape Town (South Africa) aboard ECOVER

HUGO BOSS is sadly no longer

One week after their dramatic ordeal in the Southern Ocean, British solo skippers, Alex Thomson (GBR) and Mike Golding (GBR), finally arrived into Cape Town (South Africa). ECOVER docked around 18.30 GMT on 1 December with two very exhausted, very relieved sailors onboard. The start of the VELUX 5 Oceans yacht race in Spain and the horrific storms of the first night, 41 days ago, now seem but a distant memory. It is time for Golding make a decision about ECOVER’s future in the VELUX 5 Oceans, whilst Thomson must come to terms with all that has happened and start to rebuild his life.

Nine days have now passed since Thomson, 32, suffered severe keel failure whilst in a close third place in the VELUX 5 Oceans. Forced to make the crushing decision to abandon his beloved HUGO BOSS, he took to a life raft and was rescued heroically by fellow sailor Mike Golding, who subsequently suffered a broken mast. Thrown into a very unusual situation together, the two solo sailors have undoubtedly formed a special bond. Having battled 1000 nautical miles to South Africa under vastly reduced sail, they could not have been happier to set foot on dry land.

“Mike has been absolutely brilliant and I am hugely grateful to him for everything he has done,” said Thomson on arrival in Cape Town. “We were both looking forward to a few beers last night and it was great to sink my teeth into a cheeseburger after six weeks of freeze-dried food. It has been a long week with an awful lot to take in and I am looking forward to starting a normal life again. I need to come to terms with the fact that life is not what it was. There is a lot to sort out when I come home and I need to switch my focus to my future.”

The two skippers were enjoying some of the most extraordinary and exhilarating sailing of the race when disaster struck and neither has been put off by last week’s events. A very pragmatic Golding commented: “It hasn’t worked out the way we planned it, but all of that is put into perspective. HUGO BOSS is gone and Alex is not. To some extent maybe that is the reason I was here. If that is the only reason I was in this race then that is good enough for me. I am very proud of what I did. Do I feel like a hero? No, Alex would have done the same for me. I know that with single-handed sailors, or indeed sailors – anyone who puts to sea – there is a mutual bond.”

“There will be a different relationship between us now. There is no onus on him or me for that to be so. Very early on I said to Alex: ‘You are not a passenger and you are not crew. Do what you feel comfortable with. Treat everything on board as if it were your own.”

With regard to Thomson’s huge loss, Golding said: “He is very disappointed to lose HUGO BOSS, much more than I think he is freely prepared to admit. To damage a boat badly is hard for a skipper, but to lose one is devastating. It is like losing a member of the family.”

Thomson and Golding will fly back to the UK together, where Thomson must put the VELUX 5 Oceans behind him and look to his future. His ultimate dream still stands; to be the first British sailor to win the Vendée Globe in 2008. He has a new yacht currently under construction, aboard which he will compete in the double-handed Barcelona World Race next year in the lead up to the Vendée Globe.

Hull Delivery

Even before we had docked after returning from Bilbao, I was offered the opportunity to depart the next morning as part of a minimalist crew (consisting of a skipper and two watches of two each) in delivering one of our Clipper Ventures Dubois 68s up to the town of Hull (on the mid-northeast coast of England) and back. The occasion was a weekend press conference announcing Hull's sponsorship of one of the race boats.

Out of the seven day trip, we spent slightly more than four days sailing up and back. The skipper was happy to leave all the sailing to us, as we requested. If you do the math, it obviously works out to six hours a day at the helm for each of us. That's quite a bit of enviable experience in learning the feel of such a large boat in what was often rather uneven and disagreeable seas.

It was also very cold on the North Sea in November.

Midnight dance of the bio-luminescent dolphins

On October 23rd, the day after the Velux 5 Oceans race began and all our duties had been completed, the two Clipper boats began the four day sail back up to Gosport, England. We headed a bit west of north to pass around the upper corner of France before we could head into the English Channel.

Occasionally we would see dolphins in the day. Something I'd never considered before, however, was hearing them. The first two days were rough sailing with high winds, heaving seas, and a crashing boat pounding loudly as we'd repeatedly crest a wave and then drop down into the trough with a thud. On the second night, however, things had calmed down enough that the most noticeable noise was simply the light wind and a bit of whispering water passing the hull. That night, as I stood at the helm while the skipper sat nearby, I saw him turn quickly to glance out onto the water beside us.

"What?" I asked.
"I thought heard dolphins," he said.
"You thought you heard them?"
"Yeah...you can hear them take their breaths when it's this quiet."

We heard or saw nothing more that night but the next night after our watch had stumbled up onto the deck at 2:00 a.m. in our sleep-deprived state for our four hour shift, the first mate ran through a quick briefing before heading down to her bunk:

"Winds still out of the southwest, maintain a heading of 340, and the dolphins have been putting on quite a show for a couple of hours."

We all looked over either the side of the boat and collectively dropped our jaws at what we saw.

I've witnessed glowing bacteria in oceans in California, Costa Rica, and even the Bahia Fosforescente in Puerto Rico. What I saw below me, however, was nothing like any display of bio-luminescence I could have imagined.

Around 15 dolphins sped along both sides of our boat like a group of school kids playfully harassing a grandmother pushing a shopping cart. Though our speed of 8 kts. wasn't particularly slow, it was still amazing to see how easily the dolphins clearly could move at any rate they chose in relation to us. Moreover, their path just a few feet underwater glowed and remained glowing for 50 meters or so. At a distance they looked like glowing torpedo tracks but as they drew near, you could clearly see the entire dolphin under the water by the outline of the glow all around him.

Even more delightful was to hear them breath. It sounded so human, so much like we might sound if we could swim like that.

The best way I can describe it is that it sounded just the way the Scandinavians (particularly the Danes) say, "Yes." It's a "Ja" coming not from the larynx but only vocalized by a quick inhalation that follows a sudden curling back of the tongue to open up the throat after a vacuum has been created with the diaphragm.

Yeah, I know that's quite a complex description but if you've ever been around a Dane or two, you'll know exactly what I mean.

Someone from our watch had already taken over the helm so, free of any immediate duty, I clipped my safety line to the jackstay (a length of secure webbing running the length of the boat) and worked my way up to the bow. At the very tip, I laid my chest onto the deck and moved as far forward as I could until my head projected through the pulpit next to the anchor at the front of the boat and my face was just a few feet above the five or six dolphins playing in the bow wake.

I've only just begun to experience the majesty of the open ocean but it's hard to imagine anything can top this experience. Below me in the rustling waters, these huge glowing shapes surfed left and right with these happy pulses of energy, their breaths sounding more like a gathering of sycophant Scandinavians than anything else.

After twenty minutes of this delight, I returning to the cockpit to watch the dance of the other dolphins on the sides of the boat. They mostly traveled in pairs or threes and sometimes you'd see five streaking by in perfect formation. Once in a while you'd see one some distance from the boat hurtling to intercept our path at twice the speed that the others were doing as they moved around and under out boat. As often as not, one dolphin would come to a complete stop as it would suddenly wheel into a six foot circle, as if he'd found something to eat.

We also saw what we thought were mothers and children; a pair of dolphins in formation with one of them being only half the size of the other.

Obviously I couldn't take a photograph but I've created two simulations of what it looked like. Understandably, it doesn't come close to capturing the true majesty of the moment.

Click on either picture for a full screen version to get a better idea of the performance we had for all the four hours of our watch, from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.

The sea was never as bio-luminescent again during our four day journey north. Nor did we ever see any more dolphins. A friend on another boat sailing roughly the same journey as our two clipper boats has e-mailed to ask if I saw the night dolphin show that they saw. Apparently it was the night to play all over that part of the Atlantic.

Three weeks in Bilbao, Spain

I spent the first three weeks of October in Bilbao,Spain, supporting Sir Robin Knox-Johnston's preparations for the Velux 5 Oceans single-handed round the world race sailing race. For a quick summary of Sir Robin and the race, take a look at the following September 17th, 2006 article in the London Times:
Timesonline.co.uk article on Sir Robin

As you might imagine, rubbing shoulders with the elite of the sailing world was an heady experience. Better yet, I arrived in Bilbao by way of an amazing sail from England to Spain with Sir Robin on his "Open 60" class ocean racing yacht. These 60 ft. boats are built purely for all out speed and, as the above article states, are considered to be yachting's equivalent of a Formula One racing car.

The greatest treasure of this experience, however, were a small group of friends I made in Getxo, the port that serves Bilbao. Saioa Martín and her husband, Rafa Aspiunza, along with German Garcia de Gurtubai run their own website dedicated to photography and local news of the region:

http://www.aspiunza.com/






Rafa is the kind of photographer that leads one to humbly realize what is truly possible in photography (in contrast to whatever level of praise you might have convinced yourself that your own photographs should merit). As one of the other notable people I met in Bilbao, Diana, wrote later in an e-mail, he shows you things you never thought to notice even though you might have been looking at the same view. It's worth a moment's pleasure to browse through his photographs on the website listed above.

German owns a 32 ft sailboat. Two nights before the race started (and the weeks of mounting pre-race festivities ended), I was invited to join a party on his boat, the second time I had been the recipient of his gracious floating hospitality. I was the only American there and while most everyone spoke excellent English, at times the conversation moved back and forth between English and Spanish.

I've always been greatly heartened at the willingness of various hosts in different nations around the world to speak at length in their own language when I'm part of their gathering. It shows that they understand my eagerness to experience their lives as they live them, and not as a guest to be focused upon and catered to. I felt very fortunate to have found such good friends as these in such a short time in Spain.

As we sat down to nibble on various meats and cheeses set before us, German announced, “Tim, this party, it is for you." I hadn't known that. I thought I was just joining a gathering. I was deeply touched.

Eleven of us crammed into the cockpit to eat where, in the first picture, only six people are sitting (German with most of the women of the group). After sampling some of the meats and cheeses, I reached into a small bowl which, in the darkness at arms length, appeared to hold something like peanuts. I popped a few into my mouth and found them to be rather hard to chew at first but manageable.

Two years before, at my first evening meal in Ecuador with my French/Brazilian friend Manuela, she had given me a bowl of large corn kernels, dried and salted, and explained they were a typical Ecuadorian snack. That night on German's boat I wondered if these hard, crunchy kernel-like morsels were a unique but typically Basque treat. I was delighted with their curiously almost sweet-tasting center.

Halfway through the evening, someone noticed me popping these into my mouth whole and exclaimed, “Tim! What are you doing? You don't shell your pistachios before eating them?"

For the record, then, pistachios can in fact be eaten whole without any deleterious effect.

Later in the evening everyone moved onto the dock alongside the boat, bringing a few votive candles with us, and opened up the bottle of Pacharan I had brought along (a strong liquor made from a current-like berry found in the Pyrenees). Eventually a guitar was passed around.





Several different people took turns playing while everyone...everyone sang along with any song anyone could think of, most of them in English. Sometimes a few of them even harmonized, sending goose bumps of unexpected delight down my forearms.

I sat there with such a feeling of contentment, trying to balance myself between appropriately simple enjoyment of the moment as it actually was occurring and an overwhelming awe that such is the good fortune of my life to be given gifts like this. I felt so utterly happy and marvelled at all the glorious serendipity that somehow someway enabled me to be part of this evening with these people in this location at this time in this life.

Of all the people I met and all the experiences I had in those amazing three weeks in Spain, these friends and this gathering were clearly the most memorable part of my time there. I even ponder that the simple beauty of this night might have been the highlight of 2006 for me. I've done some rather amazing things (so many tales I've yet to tell) this last year but if I had to pick one moment of 2006 to relive again, it would be that night on the dock.

These friends have even dedicated an entire page to me on their website. It's in Spanish, of course, and I can only vaguely understand the gist of it but even just looking at it gives you an idea of how generous they are.
http://www.aspiunza.com/Magazine/EspecialVelux/HonorableTim/

I’ll be returning to Bilbao in April for the finish of the Velux 5 Ocean race, and again in September when Bilbao is the first stop out of Liverpool of my own round the world sailing race. Beyond those two occasions, I hope to return simply to spend more time with these dear friends and to see more of the beautiful area around Bilbao.

Between the combination of a lack of a car, my sprained ankle (long story for another day) and the heavy workload of getting Robin ready to race, it was 10 days before my life extended beyond sleeping on one of the two Clipper racing boats that had also sailed down from Gosport, working on Robin's boat 100 yards down the dock to the left, having 2-4 beers with Robin and the crew at the end of the day's work at the bar on the other end of the dock 100 yards to the right, scrounging up a dinner (if I had the energy and/or sobriety) back in the Clipper boat, then collapsing in my small bunk at 9:00 or 9:30, if not earlier.

The first occasion I had to venture beyond those small confines was only because my sprained ankle required I visit the medical facility one block away. My Getxo friends were astounded at how little I managed to see while there for such a relatively long time and are eager to show me all that I missed, and I'm equally as eager to see it with them.

I look forward to many adventures with these friends in the Bilbao area and, hopefully, elsewhere. Vague plans are afoot to rent a sailboat together this spring in Greece or some other exotic location and explore new lands by sea.

A two and a half minute/24 picture slideshow of my Bilbao experience can be found here.

I now live in Gosport

Though I've been basically homeless by choice since September 2004, as of July 2006 I've been settled in the small English town of Gosport. I moved here to be near as possible (about 200 yards, in fact) to the center of operations of Clipper Ventures, the organization that runs the yacht race for which I'm preparing.

"Settled" is a relative word, of course. In the roughly 120 or so days I've been paying rent on this place, I've probably spent only 60 nights in my bed. Still, it's nice to have a sense of a base to return to.

The area is still heavily influenced by British naval operations but not nearly as much as about ten years ago, when Gosport was considered a seedy and rowdy sailor town. This entire northern end of Gosport (my end) is undergoing heavy development and renovation into high priced homes and apartments. Click on this GoogleMap link to see an aerial photograph of where I live (though at the time of the photo, it was just an empty field). You can zoom out to get the overall view of where I live in England.

The marina where all ten of the Clipper Ventures' 68ft ocean racing boats are moored didn't exist at the time of the aerial photo as well, though I can see the tops of their masts from my balcony. I could even hit them with a snowball throw (or two...maybe three) from here if it ever snowed here.

I doubt it will, though. The area is too influenced by the relative warmth of the sea to ever get appreciable snow, even though I'm further north than any part of the States. That's the miracle of the Gulf Stream, which has influence even up into Iceland. I'll be sailing all winter long and be far more comfortable than I would be in any waters off Virginia.

I've put a 16 picture slideshow of Gosport on Shutterfly. Click here, and then select "View Pictures" then select the pink button; "View as Slideshow."

The best thing about this apartment is the great view from my balcony, allowing me to enjoy many sunrises over the Portsmouth harbour with a cup of coffee in my hand.

...about this blog's title

During my September-October 2004 trip to Nepal, the new friends I made there started calling me the International Man of Leisure. Even though it was intended to be funny, it sounded too pretentious so I asked them to modify it to International Bozo of Leisure.

To this they readily agreed.

The photo directly below was actually the last taken, when the two guides and myself had a end-of-30-days-on-the-trail haircut and shave. The remaining 17, however, are chronilogical from start to finish. Click on any photo to get a larger image on your screen

I should note that I took 2,500 pictures in those 30 days. These 18 can hardly show the experience but it will have to suffice.









Campsite on the edge of glacier at 19,2000 ft.


Breakfast next morning after a midnight snowfall


Plastic shoes on our favorite sherpa as snow begans to fall. He told us he didn't want to soil his leather shoes.




Heading out at dawn to cross a 20,000 ft pass


Working the fixed lines up and across the pass


Our two guides just over the other side; British/American Adrian and Ecuadorian Jamie


The back side of Ama Dablam (22, 494 ft)


Two sherpa loads compared to our loads


Viewing an Everest sunrise from the summit of Kala Pattar


The sun rising behind Everest




Looking towards Everest from Tengboche


Heading home, Ama Dablam to our backs