ADVENTURE THE LONG WAY

Katy Stickland meets the skippers turning their backs on modern technology to take part in the slowest yacht race around the world - the Golden Globe Race

- Katy Stickland

Just one man - Robin Knox-Johnston finished the 1968-69 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. His triumph led to the beginnings of the round the world yacht races we see today, and now fast foiling boats, specced to the max, circumnavigate in a mere 41 days. Many raised doubts (as they did with the original event) when Australian sailor Don McIntyre announced he would be running a 2018 Golden Globe Race - 50 years after the original - with skippers having to sail nonstop around the world using only the technology available to Knox-Johnston. This meant no GPS, satellite phones, weather routing, chartplotters or autopilots. Instead, the skippers would navigate their pre-1988 production long-keeled 32-36ft boats using a sextant and rely on HAM radio for weather information as well as a barometer. In the end, 18 skippers started the 2018 Golden Globe Race; five made it to the finish. Five boats were dismasted, with three sailors needing rescue from the Southern Ocean. Others endured multiple knockdowns, were pitchpoled in heavy weather or suffered equipment failure. All of them survived.

Next year, the Golden Globe Race will return, but with some changes. The ‘retro’ element of the event will remain but the fleet will start two months later - 4 September 2022 - in an effort to avoid entering the Southern Ocean too early. McIntyre admits the speed of the 2018 fleet took him by surprise after he ‘didn’t believe’ the modelling which showed a circumnavigation of 210-220 days. Race winner Jean-Luc Van Den Heede finished in 211 days, 102 days faster than Knox-Johnston.