INTO OBLIVION

A SOLO VOYAGE VIA THE THREE GREAT SOUTHERN OCEAN CAPES IN A 32-FOOTER PROVES TESTING FOR JEROME RAND

- JEROME RAND

In October 2017 Jerome Rand set sail single-handed from Gloucester, Massachusetts, in Mighty Sparrow. In June 2018 he cruised right back again, having circumnavigated the globe via the great Southern Ocean capes in his 43-year-old long-keeled, heavy displacement Westsail 32. In today’s climate of great fanfare and buckets-full of sponsorship money, it’s refreshing to read about a determined young man who will have nothing to do with any of this. Without access to any serious funds, he pays for his own adventure like a gentleman, then goes ahead and writes a book about it that is hard to put down. Beginning to read Sailing into Oblivion, there is an absolute minimum of preamble, soul-searching and description of what went before. He simply announces his intentions and gets on with it.

Rand’s frank description of the ups and downs of this truly great voyage is a treat. The way he sets aside what must have been heavy temptation to anchor and sort things out in New Zealand or, perhaps, the Falkland Islands, is an inspiration to anyone who, like me, has a history of succumbing to what seems at the time like common sense. Oh, and by the way, despite lack of support from any bank account but his own, Jerome succeeds in becoming the first solo American to circumnavigate non-stop from an American port in a boat of 32ft or less.

This extract finds him far away in the Southern Ocean, all alone in the fog, as distant from land is it’s possible to be. He has recently lost his stemhead forestay. Read on, and see how anything can be possible given the will to succeed.

As a broken Sparrow sailed its half-starved and half-crazed crew deeper into the empty Pacific, the fog became so overwhelming that the normal world seemed a distant memory. The winds calmed on 12 March and the plan for fixing the stay was put into action.