'ROLLED & DISMASTED IN MONSTER SEAS'

Ian Herbert-Jones found himself dismasted and injured in an 80-knot storm deep in the South Atlantic after 219 days at sea in the Golden Globe Race. He told Theo Stocker about the experience

-  Theo Stocker

Cape Horn gave me a good beating, and I needed to sort some problems on the boat, so I anchored off Picton Island in the lee of the Horn. It was a good break, and the boat felt ready as I set off north amid a snow storm for what should have been a downhill run towards home. I was also very aware, however, that I was still a long way south in the Furious Fifties. For the first few days it was just that, helped by the northward Falklands current, but then a week of headwinds, which pushed me quite far east, about 1,000 miles or so from the Falklands and 4-500 miles north of South Georgia.

That’s when I got a weather warning from GGR race control, which they only issue for a severe gale or worse. Race organiser Don MacIntyre’s advice was to sail south as fast as I could to get out of the way of a developing intense, deep low pressure system. I took the advice as best I could, sailing south east.

The barometer just kept falling. I’ve never seen anything like; it just kept going down. If I’m going away from the low and the pressure still keeps falling, then you know it is going to be serious. I remember the barometer reading something like 936mb, and I know it went lower than that still. Having sailed all the major oceans already, this wasn’t my first rodeo on Puffin. Up to that point, it was pretty much a standard gale and was fairly manageable and I’d been through the normal reefing process.