Book Description
The Vendee Globe Challenge is the ultimate ocean race: a singlehanded circumnavigation, without port of call & without outside assistance. Raphael Dinelli, youngest & least experienced of the sixteen yachtsmen & women to set sail in November 1996 for what was to prove the most dramatic race in its history, was without doubt the luckiest of them all. Here, for the first time, he tells the story of his horrendous capsize & dismasting in the Southern Ocean-the fear, the utter exhaustion, the numbing cold of the Antarctic waters-of his amazing rescue against all odds by fellow skipper Pete Goss (later to receive the Legion d'Honneur from the President of France for his exploit), & of the firm friendship this extraordinary rescue was to cement. This is also the story of a burning mission: to challenge the sea head-on. Dinelli describes the struggle to turn mission into reality, from his earliest years at the leading edge of the then new sport of windsurfing to his departure as an outsider in the Vendee Globe fleet. This is a story of human endeavour, endurance and, ultimately, survival which draws the reader inexorably along through its physical & emotional highs & lows.
