Eighty-four

The Mauritius to Durban race runs roughly sixteen hundred nautical miles, passing Reunion Island, then the coastline of Madagascar, before following the South African coast down to Durban. The yacht I was skipping was based in Durban, which meant before we could even think about racing, we first had to sail her the sixteen hundred miles to Mauritius just to reach the start line.

I knew that yacht extremely well. I'd won the Cape to Rio race on her the year before, knew exactly how she behaved in every condition, how to trim her, how to get the best out of her. The real challenge wasn't the race itself, it was simply getting her to Mauritius.

A sailing school in Durban had a group of students who'd just finished their theory, no offshore experience at all, and they needed their practical sea training. I was qualified to give it. I also needed extra hands to move the yacht. It seemed like a perfect combination, their first offshore miles, my delivery crew, solved in one move.

I'd studied the weather carefully before we left. Everything pointed to a light, straightforward passage. We left Durban with almost no wind at all. Somewhere along the way we practised man overboard drills, throwing a fender in and having the crew recover it as if someone had actually gone in. Gradually the wind began to build.

At 15 knots it was properly enjoyable sailing. We hoisted more sail and the yacht settled into a comfortable rhythm. At 20-25 knots, a normal racing crew would have set the spinnaker and pushed hard. With students on board, my priority was the opposite, reduce the load, keep everything manageable, make the yacht as easy to handle as I could.

Then the wind kept building…

30 knots, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 70, 80…

Eventually we recorded a gust of 84 knots, close to 97 mph, 156 km/h, right before the wind instrument was physically torn off the top of the mast. Picture driving a car at that speed, winding the window down, and putting your arm straight out into it. That's the wind we were standing in, except it never let up, not for a second. We were in hurricane force conditions, stronger than Force 12 on the Beaufort scale. Everywhere you looked was white water. The spray off the breaking waves was thick enough that it felt like sailing through mist. The noise never stopped.

I made one decision. Everyone went below deck, and I sealed the yacht.

People assume yachts sink easily. A well built offshore yacht actually behaves more like a tennis ball, a wave can force it under for a moment, but its own buoyancy brings it straight back up. We took every sail down completely. Even with no sail up at all, the yacht was still doing close to 20 knots, purely from wind pressure on the bare mast and rigging.

We eventually diverted into Maputo, Mozambique, as the yacht had taken damage in the storm. But everyone on board made it home. That was the only thing that actually mattered to me as skipper, and there were several moments out there where I genuinely didn't know if we would.

One of the crew had some radio experience and kept us in contact with the coast whenever the conditions allowed it. During the storm we heard that another yacht had been lost entirely near Richards Bay. A different vessel deliberately drove itself onto the beach trying to escape the storm. Whether that was the right call is something people still debate.

I still think about one thing from that day more than any other. When people are under real pressure, the instinct is always to head for land, because land feels safe. At sea, that instinct can be the most dangerous thing you can act on. The closer you get to shore, the more dangerous it actually becomes. As water gets shallower near a coastline, waves slow down and steepen until they break, all that energy compressed into short, violent seas that make a yacht difficult or impossible to control. Further offshore, in deep water, the waves might be enormous, but they stay long and predictable, rarely breaking, and the skipper keeps far more control over the yacht.

You also never fight the wind. You don't fight atoms, and you don't fight a hurricane. You go with it. You follow the shape of the waves instead of driving straight against them, let the wind take the yacht where it wants to go rather than forcing a course back toward land. In the worst storms, the safest place is often the open water you're most afraid of, not the coastline you're desperate to reach.

Keeping the crew safe was the only priority that mattered that day, and staying further out on the ocean was simply the safest thing we could do. Running for shore, looking for shelter, could easily have ended with us wrecked on the rocks instead.

That storm is long behind me now, but the lesson never left. I still catch myself reaching for the coastline first, the fast fix, the thing that looks safe because it is close. It takes a conscious pause, every time, to ask whether that is actually the safer choice or just the nearer one.

I still don't always get it right. But I know now which instinct to distrust.

Somewhere, right now, you might be looking at your own coastline. I wonder if it is actually safer, or just closer.