From School Library Journal
YA-Arguably the most extreme sporting activity of any kind, the Vendee Globe is the "Everest of sailing races." In this four-month, single-handed circumnavigation, the competitors follow a hazardous route down through the Atlantic to the bottom of the world, around Antarctica, and back again. In the "godforsaken" Southern Sea, it is difficult just to survive, let alone race. In continuous gales unimpeded by land masses, hurricane-force winds whip up waves several stories tall. Freezing temperatures, poor visibility, icebergs, and sleep deprivation compound the challenge to the sailors, who hurtle through these waters at top speeds in lightweight 60-foot boats. To stay in the race, competitors must not accept help with repairs or stop for supplies. Lundy relates the suspenseful tale of the 1996-97 race, in which there were a string of disasters, several thrilling rescues, and one competitor lost at sea. Radical new boat designs were put to the test and humans were pushed beyond what would seem possible (one even performed emergency surgery upon himself). The author writes with such skill that even non-sailors will appreciate the conditions and feats he describes. He is equally adept at showing the personalities, motivations, and gifts of the men and women drawn to this challenge, and brings these unusual individuals to life. Musing on the meaning of it all, Lundy extends the perspective beyond the world of sports, and gives readers plenty to think about. This fine work of journalism should have broad and strong appeal.
Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Freezing temperatures, poor visibility, icebergs, and sleep deprivation challenge the sailors who participate in the Vendee Globe sailing race. A suspenseful account of the rigors that tested the crew, and a look at the personalities and motivations of those involved. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"A mixture of history, gripping narrative, and provocative meditation, Lundy's book conveys "a wilderness both fascinating and appalling," which has changed little since Coleridge wrote about it in 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.'"
The Vendee Globe is the only solo, around-the-world sailing race that is not in legs and that disqualifies entrants from either receiving assistance or going ashore. The section of the race circling Antarctica, however, is what makes the Vendee the world's most difficult sailing competition. In the ship-swallowing southern seas, Vendee skippers confront a six-to eight-week near-constant onslaught of hurricane conditions. Skippers go days without sleep, enduring brain-scattering storm racket, frequent capsizing, and a steady stream of concussive 50-foot waves. Amazingly, Vendee boats are designed to surf these colossal walls of water, as well as to right themselves when their masts dip over and touch the ocean's surface. Centering on the tragic 1996^-97 Vendee Globe, Lundy goes deep inside every aspect of this elite, French-dominated sport. Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air (1997) showed the potential demand for well-written adventure-sport accounts; expect this title to generate similar interest. Dane Carr
From Kirkus Reviews
``They surfed at breakneck speeds of twenty-five knots or more down waves like steep hills in winds of near-hurricane strength'': Just another day on the Vende Globe, one of those single-handed, round-the-world sailing races that ``answer to the needs of sailors eager to reach their uttermost limits,'' vibrantly captured by Lundy (Scott Turow: Meeting the Enemy, not reviewed). The Vende Globe demands that sailors take their boats 27,000 miles, unassisted and nonstop (the winner takes about 15 weeks), from France down to Antarctica, pull a clockwise turn about the Pole, then beat it back to France. This means that most of the time the boats will be in the Southern Ocean, Lundy points out, that malevolent stew of relentless, homicidal low-pressure systems that are also known as the roaring forties, furious fifties, and screaming sixties. Lundy follows the 199697 race, which featured the surreal contemporaneity of some boats finding the charmed path while others were so piteously beaten by heavy weather they would have been happy with 80-foot waves and at least a part of their masts. Call it apocalyptic sailing in what one sailor terms a miserable, mean, vicious place,'' the kind that attracts sailors not given to solemn ecstasy; they court this insanity and it all feels a little pathological. Few got to enjoy ``the exhilarating flat-out, downwind rush of Southern Ocean sledding''; more typical were acts of extreme heroism. You don't abandon someone in trouble in so remote a place; at one moment they sail through the point on earth farthest from land, some 1,660 miles out. ``Only a few astronauts have ever been farther from land than a person on a vessel at that position.'' And the astronauts weren't in a capsized sailboat, with a finger chopped off, up to their neck on a freezing ocean, and without food or water. Lundy does a marvelous job of keeping all the contestants in the action and unspooling this tale of high-seas terror with flair rather than melodrama. (Book-of-the-Month Club selection; $50,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
From the Inside Flap
Godforsaken Sea is the hair-raising account of the world's most demanding and dangerous sailing race: around the world, one sailor, one boat, no stops, no assistance. This is the story of the 1996-1997 Vendee Glove, a grueling four-month circumnavigation of the glove in the most dangerous of all waters, the Southern Ocean. Through the eyes and experiences of the fourteen men and two women who began the race, author Derek Lundy harnesses the hurricane-force winds, the six-story waves, the icebergs, Dan the deafening noise in an effort to expose the spirit of the men and women who push themselves to the outer limits of human endeavor - even if it means never returning home.
You'll meet the gallant Brit who spends days beating back against the worst seas to save a fellow racer; the Frenchman who bothers to salvage only a bottle of champagne from his broken and sinking boat; the sailor who comes to love the albatross that trails her for months, naming it Bernard; the veteran who calmly keeps smoking his cigarette as his boat capsizes; and the Canadian who, hours before he disappears forever, dispatches this message:
If you drag things out too long here, you're sure to come to grief.
With the literary touch of Conrad and Saint-Exupery, Derek Lundy elevates a compelling story into an eloquent meditation on danger and an appreciation of danger seeks who embody the best and most eccentric aspects of our human condition.
From the Back Cover
Around the world by way of Antarctica, one boat, one sailor, no help, no stopping: these are the cruelly simple rules binding the men and women who undertake the world's most dangerous and demanding sailing race, the Vendee Globe. Godforsaken Sea is the story of the 1996-1997 Vendee Globe, a grueling four-month circumnavigation of the world via the Southern Ocean, where icebergs and hurricane-force winds are a constant threat, and the waves build to monstrous, almost unimaginable heights.Through the eyes of the fourteen men and two women who embark on the race, Lundy captures both the savagery of the elements and the courage of the sailors who push themselves to the outer limits of human endeavor, even if it means never returning home. A graceful evocation of the sailing life, an eloquent meditation on danger, and an appreciation of those danger-seekers who embody the most heroic and eccentric aspects of the human condition, Godforsaken Sea is a modern classic of adventure writing, as gripping as it is insightful.
Review
"Dramatic--Powerful--Remarkable ...Derek Lundy's riveting and wonderfully expressive chronicle--is also a compelling example of creative non-fiction at its best." - The Ottawa Citizen
"Superb and engaging--" - The Globe and Mail
"Mr. Lundy is a champion explainer --always simple, eloquent, and arrestingly vivid. You could follow him, and share in the elation and terror that he describes so well, even if you'd never been aboard a sailboat in your life." - Jonathan Raban
"Riveting, often frightening--Godforsaken Sea digs into the psychology of extreme sports--. Lundy tries to understand why these men and women do what they do [and] recreates the moments when their self-control is overwhelmed by chaos." - The Toronto Star
"Will excite the imagination of armchair adventurers and sailors of all stripes." - The Halifax Daily News --This text refers to the hardcover edition. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Until Christmas Day, 1996, the race had been a typically robust version of previous Vendée Globe and boc races. If anything, it had been easier on the competitors than most of the earlier events. None of the collisions with flotsam or ice in this Vendée Globe had put the sailors' lives on the line. It was true that the Southern Ocean had behaved as usual-its chain of low-pressure systems moving relentlessly along the racers' path. Storm- and often hurricane--force wind had piled waves up to heights of fifty or sixty feet. At times, the boats had surfed down wave faces at thirty knots, almost out of control. They had struggled through the dangerous and chaotic cross-seas that followed quick changes in wind direction and had been knocked down often. For several weeks, the skippers endured this trial by wind and cold, ice and breaking waves, skirting the edge of catastrophe as they threaded their way through the great wilderness of the southern seas.
True, it was still a long way to Cape Horn. The greater extent of the Southern Ocean still lay ahead for most of the boats. There was a lot of time left for something to happen. At some point in every one of these races, most often in the Southern Ocean, a sailor's life becomes problematic, hangs by a thread. Sometimes, a life is snuffed out: by inference at first, as contact is suddenly ended; later with certainty, as enough silent time goes by or the searchers find a boat, drifting and unmanned. Some names: Jacques de Roux (1986), Mike Plant (1992), Nigel Burgess (1992), Harry Mitchell (1995)-a few of the ones who have been wiped off the planet. Who knew exactly how? What were the circumstances? An unendurable rogue wave capsizing the boat? Ice? Or a sudden, treacherous slip over the side and into the sea, _followed by a final minute or two treading the frigid water, watching the boat (with acceptance? anger? terror?) _intermittently visible on the wave crests, surfing farther and farther away, its autopilot functioning perfectly.
There hadn't been any of that yet in this Vendée Globe. But the dragons were certainly there. The "quakin' and shakin' " was about to begin. During the twelve days of Christmas, the race changed utterly.
From approximately the other side of the earth, at about the same latitude north of the equator as the Vendée Globe sailors were south of it, five hundred miles from the North Atlantic Ocean, sliding deeper into the Canadian winter, I followed the race. There was the occasional wire story in the Toronto newspapers. Nothing much on television. The Quebec media, especially the French-language side, provided more coverage because the race originated in France. More important, one of the skippers, Gerry Roufs, was from Quebec. He'd grown up in Montreal and had sailed at the Hudson Yacht Club, just outside the city. He'd been a junior sailing champion-a dinghy prodigy-and had sailed for several years as a member of the Canadian Olympic yachting team.
I was intrigued by the Vendée Globe for a couple of reasons: I'd been an avid-although amateur-sailor myself over the years, and I found it impossible not to be fascinated by the race's audacity-its embrace of the most difficult kind of sailing (single-handed), through the most dangerous waters in the world (the Southern Ocean), in the most extreme form possible (unassisted and non-stop).
I also felt a connection to the race because of Gerry Roufs. He was the first Canadian to have entered the Vendée Globe, and he had a good chance of winning. There was a small but significant affinity between us. Like me, he had trained to be a lawyer, and had then found something different to do with his life, though in his case, something precarious and uncertain, far removed from the affluent safety of the law. After a year, he left his law practice to become a professional sailor, and spent the next twenty years working towards his eventual membership in the single-handed, round-the-world elite.
The traditional sources of information about sailing races-yachting magazines published in Europe, the U.S. and Canada-were always months out of date by the time they were available. The Internet was the real mother-lode. The Vendée Globe organizers had set up a Web site. It contained good background information about the race, the sailors and the boats. The best part was the stream of bulletins posted by headquarters each day during the race, sometimes as many as five or six in a twenty-four-hour period. They were all in French, although a truncated English summary, often in an endearingly eccentric translation, was issued once a day or so. Periodically, the skippers themselves would send a few paragraphs about their daily experience from their boats via _satellite fax, e-mail or single-sideband radio, and there were regular reports of latitude-longitude positions for each boat. Like several other competitors, Roufs set up his own Web site as well, on which he posted intermittent journal entries, in both French and English, describing his activities.
Each day, I could read about the homely details of life on board these swiftest of ocean racers, the weather each boat was going through, its progress-through Biscay, the horse latitudes, the doldrums, the long swing around the South Atlantic High, and then to the southeast, below the Cape of Good Hope, and into the roaring forties of the Southern Ocean. It was an electronic feast of information.
"The sea is as near as we come to another world," wrote the poet Anne Stevenson. She called it "the planet ocean." As the Vendée Globe boats made their hard, hazardous journey through the outlandish sea, I watched them from the haven of the planet earth.
Copyright (c) 1998 by Beara Inc., excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited
From the Paperback edition. --This text refers to the hardcover edition. About the Author
Derek Lundy is an experienced amateur sailor. A lawyer by training and a writer by profession, he is the author of Scott Turow: Meeting the Enemy. He lives in Toronto. Godforsaken Sea has been published in ten countries and was a bestseller in Canada. --This text refers to the hardcover edition. 
