"We was Robbed!" "Home-town decision robs Australia!"
The Falmouth Observer, 14 June
THE MEN WHO CAPTURED THE GOLDEN GLOBE
Warren Bond -chairman, Australia II
Hugh Davidson- Tactician
Ben Lexam -Designer
Thom Hayden- Combat Psychologist
Sir Richard Harvey -Sailing Advisor
I arrived in Falmouth three days before the starting gun with a case of Cutty Sark, a rented Land Rover, and a press credential that described me as a maritime correspondent.
The race committee explained, as it explained every year, that the Golden Globe was not "cursed." It was a solo round-the-world regatta with an unusually high attrition rate. The race was open to any sailor willing to meet its entry requirements. Nine sailors set out, over the course of the summer and fall, to sail around the world alone and without assistance. Only one made it back successfully. Last year's race triggered the largest peacetime maritime rescue operation in British history.
The sponsorship deck that year ran to sixty-one pages and had been fought over by three energy-drink companies, a funeral-insurance conglomerate - WE COVER THE WHOLE VOYAGE! (I was drunk enough to enjoy the copy) a men's vitamin brand, and a defunct tobacco company relaunched as an "extreme lifestyle house." The latter had bought naming rights to three separate legs of the course and wanted its camel-and-compass logo on every hull and mast and, ideally, every competitor. A camera drone the size of a dinner plate hung above the line filming all of it for a rights package that would air, eventually, on four continents.
Each boat in the fleet carried the committee's approved telemetry package: a sealed black box installed at no charge by Northern Meridian Shipping. It was there, the committee said, for the confidence of a global audience.
Seven boats stood at the start line. By nightfall, two had returned. One was a sponsor's nephew from Surrey. He had understood the phrase immersive branding to mean a sequence of helicopter transfers, cocktail events, and photographs in foul-weather gear. When the race director told him it meant months alone south of the great capes, he wept in front of a camera crew. The footage did well online.
The other had a suspicious gear failure and through scrambled navigator radio messages was determined to have "buried her head in a big wave" and was towed in.
The remaining five boats went south.
EKHART HANSON
Ekhart’s mother had come within a tenth of a second of qualifying for the Australian Olympic swim team the year before he was born. When Ekhart was nine, she sewed him a sail out of an Army surplus parachute for a boat he'd built himself and stood on the dock timing him with a stopwatch. At twenty, with an aerodynamics paper due the following Monday, he withdrew from his final university exams to compete in his first offshore race instead.
Hanson had signed with no sponsors. Instead, he had taken out a second mortgage on the cottage where he lived in Sydney. The note came due four months after the race's projected finish. If he came home broke, the bank would take the cottage within ninety days.
His hull plans came from a naval architect in Lorient with an excellent reputation and, as it turned out, two clients named Hanson that month. The drawings sent to Ekhart belonged to the other man: plans for a racing multihull, commissioned by a sailor with more money and, apparently, more confidence in the ocean.
The architect's office was apologetic but unmoved. It offered a partial refund.
So Hanson built the wrong boat exactly as drawn, with half the money the project required. He named her Merlin.
THE TWINS
The Radford twins, Maureen and Cleo, began the race a boat-length apart without looking at one another. Their father had given them identical Optimist dinghies for their eighth birthday, down to the sail numbers, and had been delighted rather than alarmed when they immediately started racing each other to the harbor mouth and back. Their father's company sponsored both campaigns under a contract requiring them to embrace at the finish, "regardless of placement or personal circumstance."
Their lawyers had fought the clause and lost. Maureen had told the race committee that she would pay the fine.
They sailed The Dawn Treader and Prince Caspian, respectively.
JEAN COTTE
Jean Cotte was born near the Azores during year four of a seven-year circumnavigation undertaken by her parents. At thirteen, after gaining legal emancipation, she sailed alone to England.
The Dutch government tried to stop her. Court cases followed for ten months. Eventually, the judges returned responsibility to her parents, who permitted the voyage. Her only schooling had come from a stack of correspondence-course workbooks kept dry in a biscuit tin, and from her father, who taught her celestial navigation before he taught her long division.
Cotte sailed Gretel II.
KEN HARA
Ken Hara was educated in Hong Kong, where he lived with his diplomat parents. As a teenager, he won the China Sea Race twice. His father had arranged a place for him at the London School of Economics the year he won it the second time.
He sailed Always $omething, sponsored by the Ninth Wave Casino. The contract required the dollar sign.
K12
Commander Martin Kwiatkowski, RN, retired after twenty-two years in the Royal Navy. He had served in frigates, a minesweeper, and a hydrographic survey vessel. They called him K12. He claimed the nickname referred to a navigation exam he had topped at Dartmouth, and that he'd been known in the service as K-12 ever since. The name began as a pronunciation aid and stuck. Since retiring, he had also become Vice Commodore of his home yacht club.
He sailed Eik Greitai - "Go Fast" in Lithuanian.
THE RACE IS ON
The gun went at twelve, but no one on the water heard it.
The sound was swallowed by helicopters, sponsor music, the crowd along the breakwater. The committee boat flashed its signal. The fleet moved.
The first minutes were violent in the minor, legitimate ways of racing. Merlin crossed late and accelerated without warning.
Always $omething came through beneath the Ninth Wave Casino insignia, gold wave folding around black coin. Greitai held back a moment.
I have to get this boat turned around and quickly.
Please don't let me sail 20 miles to still not get by.
The red boat has nothing to do with me. Whenever I think of my opponent it will be as the color of their sail, nothing more. For all I know my boat is better. I will never think of Merlin as anything less than 100 percent effective. And if she can't sail, I'll destroy her.
For the first five days, the weather was mild. The wind held west and moderate. The boats spread into the familiar hierarchies. Every six hours, Race Control sent a weather bulletin.
"Low pressure developing well to the south. No immediate concern to competitors."
On the third, it was "deepening but distant."
On the fourth, it acquired a name: the Morrow System, after the weather-service employee who had identified it. The committee advised competitors to "exercise discretion"
Ekhart Hanson heard the bulletin while cutting open a packet of instant coffee with his teeth.
"That means they don't know what the Hell’s coming,” he said.
Maureen and Cleo did not speak directly. They addressed each other through the radio operator.
"Race Control, ask Prince Caspian whether he intends to remain on my weather side."
"Prince Caspian, response?"
"Tell The Dawn Treader she doesn’t own the wind."
On the seventh day, Maureen crossed Cleo's bow close enough for the race feed to issue a safety notice. On the eighth, he sent a complaint alleging that she had failed to display her correct navigation lights.
FIRST OUT
Somehow I lured ALWAYS $OMETHING to meet me. Now she must face me on my terms, in a duel to the mark, whether she likes it or not. Who will blink first. I'm holding on the edge of the wind.
Neither boat had enough wind to make the next mark before daylight. The tracker would show them stopped, two icons suspended on the race map. Ekhart called it an opening. He boarded Always $omething with his knife in his mouth like a pirate, then sat on her decks drinking a highball until he loaded Hara into his own boat and called in Always $omething as abandoned.
THE TWINS
Maureen fired first.
The flare gun made a short, ridiculous sound-a child's cap pistol magnified by an empty ocean.
Cleo saw it coming. He had been standing beneath the boom of Prince Caspian, one hand on the backstay. The flare struck the mainsail. It stuck there, burning, an evil little star. Then the wind caught it.
"Maureen," he said into the radio.
The Dawn Treader rose on a wave.
Maureen stood in her cockpit holding the flare pistol at her side.
"You crossed me," she said.
"I crossed your bow."
"You crossed me!"
The second flare came lower.
Cleo ducked. It passed over the stern of Prince Caspian, hissing through rain, and vanished into the waves.
"Race Control," he said, "Please note that my sister has opened fire on me."
Cleo fired.
His flare struck The Dawn Treader near the stern. The tarp caught at once. The fuel ignited.
Maureen shouted something that did not carry over the wind. Then she fired again.
The flare hit Prince Caspian's headsail and tore through it in a spray of sparks. Cleo cut the ruined sail free. For ten minutes, the twins circled one another in the rain.
The tracker showed two icons performing tight, impossible loops. The public broadcast called it "a dramatic tactical confrontation." Ninth Wave Casino posted the clip with a flame emoji. Their father's holding company issued a statement praising their "competitive spirit." The boats listed slowly, then faster, as if finally choosing a side.
Cleo launched his life raft and watched his own boat disappear.
Maureen's boat lasted another twenty minutes.
"Race Control, both vessels are lost."
"Confirm the status of the competitors."
Cleo watched his sister in the raft.
"Alive," Cleo said. "Unfortunately."
The two rafts drifted apart beneath the burning wreckage.
The public map placed Merlin two miles north-west of Always $omething, proceeding south at six knots. The emergency bulletin placed the abandoned casino yacht fifteen miles east of that position.
K12
The media boat arrived just after noon, white and glossy and carrying two camera operators and a producer. GOLDEN GLOBE OFFICIAL CONTENT UNIT was printed along its side.
They circled Eik Greitai once for the establishing shot.
The wake struck broadside. Green water came over the rail and ran the length of the cockpit, cold enough to take the breath out of a man twenty-two years in frigates.
K12 came up the companionway.
"Keep clear," he called.
The producer lifted a hand.
"Just getting some footage, Commander!"
The launch made another pass.
"Keep clear of my vessel," K12 shouted.
The cameraman pointed his lens at him.
"Can you say that again, sir?"
K12 fired one round and was disqualified.
By one o'clock, the Golden Globe had lost three boats, one competitor, two television cameras, and any serious claim to being a sporting event.
The race director stood beneath the sponsor wall with a legal pad in one hand and a satellite phone in the other.
"Do not say 'attack,'" she told the communications officer.
"What should we say?"
"Say 'incident.'"
"And the twins?"
"Withdrawn."
"And Hanson?"
"And Kwiatkowski?"
The race director looked at the live tracker. Eik Greitai had changed course. It was no longer sailing toward the next mark.
"Disciplinary matter," she said.
The communications officer looked down at the list.
"And if the press asks why he is sailing toward Merlin?"
The race director considered this.
WINNER TAKES ALL
Jean Cotte won the Golden Globe at 04:16 on a Tuesday morning. The race committee had planned a brass band, and a sponsor platform large enough for the surviving competitors to stand beneath the logos.
At 03:58, a fisherman named saw a mast light moving through the fog outside Falmouth Harbor. He called the harbormaster.
"Name of vessel?" the harbormaster asked. He lifted his binoculars.
"Can't make it out."
At 04:16, Gretel II crossed the finish line alone.
"Gretel II, this is Race Control," the duty officer called. "Congratulations. You have finished first overall. Please acknowledge."
Gretel II heeled sharply, passed the committee boat, and sailed back into the fog.
At 04:41, the official Golden Globe website updated.
PROVISIONAL FINISHER: JEAN COTTE, GRETEL II.
STATUS: UNDER REVIEW.
Out beyond the harbor mouth, Merlin appeared beneath a reduced white sail. The water inside the breakwater was freezing , it made the last hundred yards feel like the least real part of the voyage. The crowd saw her first.
"Ladies and gentlemen, after an unprecedented Golden Globe Race - a storm, fire, retirements, rescues, and tragedy - we welcome home the man who endured it all: Ekhart Hanson aboard Merlin!"
Confetti cannons fired from the committee boat.
The bow dipped once. Water had begun to rise through the cockpit drains.
I will never think of Merlin as anything less than one hundred percent effective.
"-an extraordinary victory for determination, for seamanship, and for the enduring spirit of-"
A seam along the starboard quarter opened.
"Mr. Hanson!" she shouted. "How was it?”
Ekhart kept smiling until the water reached his waist. For one second, he seemed to consider the question honestly.
Then he smiled.
"Smooth sailing."
-- C.Hightower would be nothing without her steady hands.
