Customer Reviews

Godforsaken Sea: The True Story of a Race Through the World's Most Dangerous Waters

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I grew up in the Southern Hemisphere (South Africa) and sailed Hobie 14s on the Cape Coast. You really learn to respect (actually dread is a better way to describe it sometimes) the sea if you sail in these fast little craft. I can only imagine how awesome the Southern Ocean must be. Lundy does an excellent job of describing the events as they unfolded in the 1996/1997 Vendee Globe. It is a truly terrifying account.

A yachtie friend of mine summed this book up really well: if you want to enjoy sailing don't read books like this one. They'll just scare you into never setting sail again. To me this book was awful and captivating at the same time - you just can't put it down, because you know there is going to be this horrible gut wrenching saga taking place in a godforsaken place where the seas are like 'six story buildings' and 'knock downs' are common.

Lundy does his best to delve into the minds of these (in my opinion)crazy competitors. His research on the race, navigation and seamanship in general is obviously excellent. He does seem to know what he is talking about. The technical stuff is mostly fascinating and thorough.

But ultimately you have to do a big Galic shrug of the shoulders if you want to understand the sailors who compete in the Vendee Globe. All of Lundy's research and interviews with the competitors fails in this respect...they're just stark raving bonkers, just accept it!

Buy this book but be warned...get something cheerful to read afterwards.

This is a great vicarious thrill. 16 racers (14 men and 2 women) traverse the world's most dangerous waters for the fame and fortune of winning the Vendee Globe around the world race. Battling constant hurricane conditions, 60-70 foot seas, and the everpresent threat of icebergs; these men and women risk their very lives. Unlike most of the other famous sailing events, this is a single person competition, one person against the elements, guiding their small crafts through what truly are 'godforsaken seas.' Derek Lundy does a great job describing the action, but he deserves far less credit than the bigger-than-life sailors who competed in the Vendee Globe. The only drawback to the book is Lundy's heavy reliance on sailing jargon, but he does a credible job explaining the technical aspects...this makes the book a bit slow at times, but this seems a necessary evil. Overall, a great book, even if you know little about sailing. I can't wait to track the Millenium Vendee Globe.

Whew! What a story! The book is very well-written and will enable the reader to experience the nail-biting excitement of the Race from the safety of a cozy LazyBoy. I've read other reviews here and found that a few criticized the 'bouncing around'. This actually helps to keep things exciting and the book moves at a quick pace. The short chapters helped me (busy) steal a quick chapter here and there. I found myself reading much of this while engaged in air travel and often caught myself breathing heavily and grunting out 'wow', 'ugh', and 'oh' (fellow passengers often inquired about what I was reading). I'm a Northwest sailor who's experienced some rough weather. This made my experiences seem like pony rides compared to this wild adventure. Imagine spending a few months - alone and non-stop - surfing down 5-story waves at 25 knots and living through it! This is truly an incredible adventure and these are most incredible people. The writer guides you through the experiences of the participants and provides glimpses into the backround and make-up of the super-humans who dreamed, dared, and survived (and those that did not) this ordeal.

My only criticism is that the maps were too few and not nearly as detailed as they should have been (pull out your Atlas and you'll be happy). There could have been a few photos that would have made this great book even greater.

If you're a sailor, you'll love this book. If not, you'll still be entertained and amazed by what humans can endure and achieve.

The old adage "Don't judge a book by it's cover" is usually a good one, but the fact that the art director of GODFORSAKEN SEA actually used the exact same cover photo as Pete Goss's CLOSE TO THE WIND is an indication of what a supernumerary book this really is.

Derek Lundy is an (Anglo?-) Canadian attorney-turned-sailor-turned-author. He has some recreational blue water cruising experience. He is the most rabid Francophile I have ever come across (frankly, that alone would cost him a star with most reviewers). He describes GODFORSAKEN SEA as "the story of the Vendee Globe and Gerry Roufs" but it isn't. That's one of the problems with GODFORSAKEN SEA: Lundy isn't ever quite certain what this book is about, and so he hopscotches from one topic to another and back again like a frantic capuchin monkey.

If it were the story of Gerry Roufs (the only Canadian entrant in the 1996-97 Globe Vendee, and the only sailor to lose his life), GODFORSAKEN SEA would be a fine book. Lundy clearly identifies with Roufs, a (French-) Canadian attorney-turned sailor, rather like himself. Still, we find out relatively little about Roufs, his life, or his boat. Roufs may have disappeared in a gale, but he was a human being, never a cypher; he had a full life, which Lundy does poorly in reporting, and it's a shame, because GODFORSAKEN SEA could have been a fine memorial to the man.

Lundy's attempts to draw parallels between the squalls he's sailed through and the hundred foot waves and hurricane winds of the Southern Ocean are sincere attempts to identify with the solo circumnavigators of the Vendee on some level. They may seem silly but they're forgivable.

What isn't forgivable is Lundy's chaotic approach to the story. One minute he is mourning Gerry Roufs, the next he is singing the praises of each of the French entrants, then afterward he warns us perseveratively about the nasty conditions of the Southern Ocean. He takes a breath to discuss racing yacht design, and then he is reminiscing about his sailing experiences. A few asides are thrown in about the entrants' earlier sailing experiences, and he's back to weatherfax technology, Bordeaux wine or straightforward (but incomplete) race reportage: All this, over and over and over.

GODFORSAKEN SEA is in desperate need of an editor, but editing probably would have reduced this book to a third of it's 272 pages, making it less marketable. As it stands, GODFORSAKEN SEA isn't quite Godforsaken; but it sure could use a prayer or two. Pete Goss's CLOSE TO THE WIND is a better written book about the same Globe Vendee, and if it focuses on Goss more exclusively, at least it isn't suffering from literary Attention Deficit Disorder.

TWO AND A HALF STARS: All based on the innate quality of the story of the 1996-97 Globe Vendee.

Lundy writes one of the most literary and most spellbinding adventure accounts of all the action books out there. I'm a big fan of almost all these books, but this one will rivet you like no other. Lundy takes the time to interview all the sailors to the point that we feel that we know them personally. He also analyzes the kind of personal profile that would lead someone to sled down a 7 story wave at 30 knots in a 60 foot boat. For those who find oceans and currents interesting, Lundy gives quite a lot of descriptions of the roaring 40's, screaming 60's, the types of waves and currents at those latitudes, the various pressure systems, and how weather whips around the globe with no land to stop it. The Southern Ocean is in a category by itself and it seems almost crazy to try to tame it solo with sailboats, no matter how modern. Lundy does use a good deal of technical jargon, but I found it easy enough to follow as a non-sailor since he does explain all the special vocabulary.

Rather than follow the gimicky technique of some adventure books that leave you hanging at every minute, he delves into some more philosophical areas, history and background and provides a meatier book than most. Anyone who likes sailing, insane risks, wild action, and stories of courage and adventure will love this book. It was one of my favorites overall, even stacked against Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm. I can't get the image out of my mind of the sailor that came back and could not let go of his small son's head -- which made altogether more poignant the case of the sailor who died, leaving behind his 8 year old girl and wife.

This book covers a compelling sports event, filled with unique and interesting competitors. Sorry to say that it lacks a great deal in its organization, writing style, and seems to repeat itself often.

It was potentially a great story, but the narrative lets us down.

I sailed through this book, loving the page-turning breakneck speeds I achieved in its gusts and holding on patiently through the frustrations and disappointments I experienced in its doldrums, digressions and deprivations.

In 1996/1997, the drama of the Vendee Round the World yacht race appeared on our television screens: Pete Goss' rescue of Dinelli and the Australian Navy's rescue of Bullimore. But the box didn't do to me nearly as much as what Derek Lundy's book did three years later. The book provides a context, a psychological, social and technical subplot, whereas the box provided a newsy sensationalist headline.

Dramatizing action-packed, high drama in a work of non-fiction - this one set mostly in the Southern Ocean in the high latitudes - is difficult to pull off, especially if your readers are outsiders - non-sailors. Lundy, however, grabbed my empathy not only with the sailors in the race (I'm an obsessed Hobie 18 sailor), but also my admiration for him, the writer, for dramatizing the dramatic in a such a way that the human drama blasts through in its full power and glory. It moved me too that Lundy dedicated the book to his father: Just as families bind people, so too does the sea.

Lundy makes the reading experience a metaphor for sailing. Like the sailors facing the Godforsaken Sea, Lundy, the writer, faced the daunting prospect of dramatizing high drama. In the process, he's turned what to many is no more than another sport competition into a profound human interest story.

Sure there are digressions at the height of the action. Sure there are repetitions - endless repetitions. But these are metaphors for sailing, wave after wave, for thousands of miles, beating against the winds sometimes, running with them at others, now and then becoming becalmed. Lundy uses the digressions as literary devices to heighten the drama when it happens. The structure of the book is interwoven with the sailing experience.

At sea, Pete Goss didn't mind that his phone wasn't working most of the time because contact with those on shore distracted him from the sailing and the solitude. Reading Godforsaken Sea was similar. I didn't want to stop. I resented interruptions. I didn't want to leave these characters and their ordeal. When interrupted, by the phone, say, I couldn't wait to get back to the book.

I doff my hat to Lundy for telling the story of the sailors in the Southern Ocean so compellingly. I doff my hat to the sailors of the Southern Ocean for sailing in conditions that make Lundy - and I - coo in admiration, and go a little green with envy.

Despite an interesting topic and well-researched storyline, Mr. Lundy's presentation left a lot to be desired. Was this a postmodern attempt to present a non-linear chronology? I can't say. But his writing is not strong. And the structure he chose to frame the tale did little to give me, as reader, anything to invest in. Knockdown is much better!!!

An interesting book. However it should have been shortened by at least one half. Lundy simply begins repeating and repeating the observation that sailing the Southern Ocean is dangerous, high winds, big waves.

I found myself simply glancing at the pages after the halfway point as Lundy continued to repeat this message. OK. The winds are high, the seas are high, you are alone and far from land. Geez, that's not too hard to understand.

I started to read this book (1st 50 pages) and became totally frustrated because the author doesn't know how to tell a story. He jumps from one idea to another never finishing the first. In the first few pages he tells us about sailors capsized waiting for rescue then leaves this story to discuss other things. He says a frenchman pioneered techniques for surviving storms at sea, but then doesn't tell us anything about these techniques. He talks about a bet between two English sailors that resulted in a solo race accross the Pacific but then tells us nothing about this inaugural race, skipping to how a frenchman won the 2nd version......and the discontinities continue, who knows where it's going next. I gave up which is very atypical for me. I usually dig in and finish. I'm fascinated by the subject, but the book needs some serious editing before it is worthy of publishing!