Customer Reviews

Close to the Wind: An Extraordinary Story of Triumph Over Adversity

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is an excellent, riveting book. Hats off to Pete Goss for not only sailing in this horrific race, but also for writing so sensitively and evocatively about it. The story of Pete Goss puts the lie to the idea that there are no heroes anymore. I highly recommend this book.

A great story that keeps your attention. The "Into Thin Air" of sailing. The only negative is that you can tell Goss is a professional sailor not a professional writer.

I enjoyed this book but I did think he talked a little to much about his struggles to get sponsorship and not enough about his sailing. The sailing parts of the book were the most interesting because he always seems to be pushing his boats to the limit. Which in turn he seems to always almost sink them. So for his next book , which will be coming out I'm sure after his around the world race in 2001, more sailing less background.

I'm sorry. I bought this book on the recommendations on this site and what a waste of time it was. The book is supposed to be about his Vendee Globe sail but he spends the 245 pages just talking about the endless years leading up to the race. I read this after reading Godforsaken Sea which was a great read and very exciting. I don't particularly care how much this guy loves his wife, how he spent all those years in the merchant marine, or how he sees his run as a triumph over adversity. The only triumph was that I quit reading it at page 100. If you are looking for something exciting to read, buy something else.

Goss is the real deal. A real-life hero. ...Both for what he has done for others and what he has accomplished for himself. Through Goss you'll get a glimpse of the kind of real-life tenacity and spirit it takes just to get to the starting line (let alone finish) of a challenge larger than most of us will ever choose to face. If you're looking to experience an exciting story about a yacht race you've missed the boat...they left in '96. Read this book, maybe you'll do something worth writing about yourself! A GREAT INSPIRATION.

This book is beyond inept. Goss takes what could be an exciting story and makes it into an endless parade of money troubles and "pip pip" British posturing. How did he make this race so boring? Look, this book should have started and ended in the water. Why doesn't anyone edit anymore?

Having ridden Destroyers for the US Navy for twenty years and cruising the Caribbean for the last three, I can say this is the definitive sailor's story. Truly inspirational. This book belongs in any boats library with Fastnet Force 10, Fatal Storm and A Hungry Ocean.

This book is an object lesson in why illiterate adventurers shouldn't pen their own memoirs. How in the world did Goss take this incredible adventure and reduce it to the most inane, boring mush? He really could have used a better editor, perhaps one not equally illiterate.

Pete Goss was born to be close to the wind. Although Goss admits in this autobiography that he had rather weak goals growing up, it is clear that Goss is one of those persons born to be before the mast. Even his nine year stint in the Royal Marines was that of a compleat sailor as his military career focused on representing his Service in a series of transatlantic and other competitions. It all seems too serendipitous, at least until the reader realizes that Goss's life is one where his ambition and his circumstances happily coincide in an almost preordained fashion.

Perhaps that is why Goss's constant (realistic) financial concerns and searches for sponsorship grate so badly upon the reader. His money worries are a consistent theme in CLOSE TO THE WIND. And it is true that had Goss not pressed himself to continually move forward he probably would have been broke and unable to pursue his dreams. To me, Goss is not the bigger hero in this book, but rather his wife Tracey, who never seemed to flag in her devotion either to Pete or to his dreams.

The ultimate dream was to compete in the 1996-97 Vendee Globe, a single-handed circumnavigation across the Southern Ocean. For the Vendee, Pete Goss commissioned the building of "Aqua Quorum" a revolutionary high-speed sailboat with a pendulum keel. "Aqua Quorum" performed magnificently.

And so did Goss. A thousand miles from land in a Christmas Day Austral Summer hurricane under polar conditions, Goss received word that a race competitor, Raphael Dinelli, was aboard his sinking boat and facing certain death. Goss immediately turned "Aqua Quorum" back into the teeth of the storm, sailed nearly 200 miles back on his track, and plucked the hypothermic Dinelli from the sea.

Although Goss came in only fifth (in a field of six finishers) he was awarded the French Legion of Honor and an MBE by Queen Elizabeth for his rescue of Dinelli. CLOSE TO THE WIND is a tale of true heroism told in an honest, unassuming, but never diffident tone by a man who merely did what he felt he had to. And, more important than any accolades, is Goss's pleasure at making a new friend.

Any sailor, novice or expert will love this tale of an extremely brave hero. Take it on the boat with you and read it aloud!