Seriously dangerous

I have long thought that climbing big mountains in the Himalayas is a fairly dangerous sport, and that people who do a lot of it, year after year, are apt to end up damaged or dead. Maurice Herzog to name just one.

While today I read of an ongoing, single handed sailing race around the world, more exactly a circumnavigation of the Antarctic, with a couple of trips up and down the Atlantic to get there from Sables d'Olonne, otherwise a fine town in western France for a beach holiday. I have long held ambitions to go back there, but I don't suppose we shall make it now, even though we can now afford to do it in reasonable style, rather than in a tent.

So you stump up half a million pounds to buy something like the yacht above, second hand. You then spend half as much again to get it into racing trim. And then you set off. Don't need any pocket money, as you are not supposed to stop off before you get back to Sables d'Olonne.

Some time later, you are in the southern ocean, doing around 30 miles an hour, when your boat smacks into a wave, breaks in half and sinks - or at the very least turns over. You wind up in a life raft, maybe 1,000 miles from the nearest land. The chap in the news today got away with it, as others had done before him, but it is not a chance I would care to take.

And I remember seeing selfies taken by a solo lady in the same ocean, selfies which made it clear that there were times when one wondered why on earth one did it. It must get very lonely at times, not to say scary, out there in the wastes of ocean, not for nothing called the roaring forties.

I also remember being told by a chap parasailing, probably off the Isle of Wight or south Devon, that you did not want to hit the water at the sort of speeds he got up to. His crash helmet was for real.

Reference 1: psmv4: Getting to the top. Next report on Herzog now rather overdue.

Reference 2: Yachts for Sale, Used Boats, New Boats and Yacht Brokers at YachtWorld. With thanks for use of their picture.