Ocean racing... who'd do it?

Margaret Norris muses on what it takes to sail around the world – from the first 1968/9 Golden Globe Race to the current Vendée Globe

- Margaret Norris

With four British sailors taking on the Vendée Globe – a solo, non-stop race around the world – I’ve been thinking about how ocean racing began, and how it’s all changed.

As a sailor of 14ft dinghies, who likes an enjoyable but not too stressful sail, I choose my conditions carefully: Force 4 for an exciting sail; Force 5 and I know it will be wet with the chance of a capsize.

So I have great admiration for the men and women who choose to sail our planet’s oceans solo or with a crew, trying to be the oldest, youngest or fastest, travelling with the winds or against them but always rushing towards the low-pressure systems to go ever quicker.

Nowadays they sail expensive high tech boats with satellite phones, fax machines, access to the latest weather data and GPS, so they and others know their position within a few metres.

It was all very different in 1968 when nine sailors set out to try to circumnavigate the globe, solo and non-stop. It had never been done before and nobody knew if it was even possible.

Technology was basic. Radios sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t and boat positions had to be determined using sextants and stars. The skippers were very much on their own and they would have to take food and boat spares to last for what could be a 10-month passage. The Sunday Times offered a £5,000 prize and called it the Golden Globe Race. Only one of the nine would make it to the finish and for one the race would end in tragedy.

Tough guys