Godforsaken Sea: Racing The World's Most Dangerous Waters - Softcover

The Southern Ocean is the sailor's Everest. These are unquestionably the most dangerous waters in the world: hurricane infested, frigid, wholly unpredictable, and so remote, according to Derek Lundy, that "only a few astronauts have ever been further from land than a person on a vessel in that position." Encircling Antarctica, this fearsome body of water has terrorized sailors and wrecked the ablest of ships throughout maritime history. Imagine, then, a round-the-world, single-handed sailing race of the most extreme kind--no stopping, no assistance--requiring each lone sailor to spend half the total race distance (roughly 13,000 miles) fighting this nightmarish, merciless sea.

The race is the Vendee Globe, and The Godforsaken Sea is the story of the 1996-1997 competition. Fourteen men and two women began the race in Les Sables-d'Olonne, France. Six officially finished; three were wrecked and rescued; one sailor performed emergency surgery on himself mid-race; one perished. This is high adventure of the most gripping, perilous sort, demanding a tightly controlled, suspenseful narrative: "Visualize a never-ending series of five- or six-story buildings, with sloping sides of various angles ... moving towards [the sailors] at forty miles an hour. Some of the time, the top one or two stories will collapse on top of them." But Lundy delivers more, weaving a superior fabric of psychology and physics, action and reflection. Even the utter novice will emerge understanding the architecture of racing vessels, the evolution of storms, the physical and psychological courage required to survive five-and-a half months battling the ocean alone.

Sailing aficionados may already believe that the Vendee Globe is the pinnacle of extreme sports. With Lundy's help, armchair adventurers can dig in and hang on for the ride. --Svenja Soldovieri

"Godforsaken Sea goes beyond the events at hand to explore our fascination with the sea and, as [Lundy] quotes Melville, 'the tiger heart that pants beneath it." -- Outside Magazine

"Eloquent.... Mr. Lundy 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." -- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

"Godforsaken Sea is one of the best books ever written about sailing.... It gives readers the adrenaline rush of what Lundy calls 'apocalyptic 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 magazine

"That terrible race with its hideous suffering deserved a poet, and found one in Derek Lundy." -- The National Review

"This is a book which vividly transcends its immediate brief as a narrative of the race and those who sailed it, and presents a gripping and poetic evocation of the terrible and seductive power of the sea ....Like a skilled novelist, Lundy brings such thrilling episodes alive with his unerring eye for telling detail and a deft touch at pacing. And if Godforsaken Sea were just a first-rate piece of narrative journalism, it would be a fine book in itself. But it is far more than that. Lundy, as well as having a gift for journalism, is deeply read in his subject, and his book is as much a navigation through the literature of the sea as an account of a yacht race....Ultimately Godforsaken Sea goes a long way to answering that most perplexing question: why do otherwise sane and sensible people brave the unforgiving extremity of the waves? Since Homer, the capricious gods of the sea and the storms have both fascinated and frightened mankind. Lundy has triumphed in making the siren-call of the oceans intelligible to those, like me, who are resoundingly deaf to its attractions. It is a fine read, and one I can't recommend highly enough." -- The Independent, UK

"You are swept up in his tale .... Lundy leads us eloquently through the minds of 16 intrepid sailors .... There is the vivid portrayal of Raphael Dinelli, the vagabond Frenchman, hitching himself to the upside-down keel of his boat like a horse to a post. There is the grim picture of Tony Bullimore, the aging solo sailor from England, chopping off a finger in a hatch cover as he struggles to safety in the shattered hull of his capsized vessel. And who can shut out the fear that must have ravaged Thierry Dubois, the Frenchman who clambered like a frightened seal onto the slick, cold back of his wave-swept sailboat?" -- The New York Times Book Review

INCOMPARABLE...a profound and brilliantly executed book featuring the sea, and human nature. -- William F. Buckley, Jr.

Lundy does a marvelous job of keeping all the contestants in the action and unspooling this tale of high-seas terror with flair rather than melodrama. -- Kirkus