We are at the end of a continent here in the Cape and of course anyone who is sailing ast very rarely does so with out stopping,one such person was in the 1990/1 BOC Around the world single handed yacht race. As the first female entry she was special,she also beat the men into Cape Town by the best part of week? I had the pleasure to meet her at the RCYC,two friends Nigel and Simone were trying to assist her with much needed local help,she was not what one would call 'over sponsered'.I suggested to her that the HBYC would like to host her for an evening,would she come and meet the club? the reply was positive.Speaking the the then HBYC Commodore Alan Batley,he agreed we should try and make Issabelle as welcome as the club could manage.Issablle was a star,she spoke to us as a group,Alan then made some club presentations,one was a HBYC club Burgee,it was a great and memorable evening for the Hout Bay Yacht Club,what followed for Issabelle on the next leg of her trip around the world was,for her even more memorable!
Advertise on NYTimes.com
Solo Sailor, Instant Heroine
By BARBARA LLOYD
October 23, 1994 NEW YORK-It was a bright, clear night in Cape Town when the French solo sailor, Isabelle Autissier, sailed across the finish line in her recordsetting first stage of the BOC round-theworld yacht race early today. The next closest competitor was still 1,200 miles away, reason enough for Autissier to become France's newest sports heroine. "Barring a gear failure, she has such a commanding lead now that it seems impossible for anyone to catch her in the remaining 16,000 miles of the race," said Mark Schrader, the BOC race director, from Cape Town.
The 38-year-old Autissier, alone on her 60-foot sailboat, Ecureuil PoitouCharentes 2, bucked 40-knot winds as she sailed past Cape Town's Table Mountain today. She arrived at about 3:30 A.M., having completed her 6,800-mile voyage from Charleston, S.C., in 35 days, 8 hours, 52 minutes. The passage was two days faster than the BOC record set in 1990 by another French sailor, Alain Gautier. Still at sea are 17 men. "It's incredible," Autissier said, clinging to the bow of her boat as hundreds of well-wishers chanted: "Vive la France!" "I'm astonished, even now I don't realize what I've accomplished," she said.
Autissier, who is the only woman competing in the 1994‚95 BOC Challenge race, is also the only woman to have completed a 27,000-mile BOC competition. Sailing in the 1990‚91 BOC race, she finished seventh, having been dismasted along the way. She vowed at that time to come back and win. "She was the most determined person and the most focused on what she would do in the next four years," said Schrader.
Autissier used her New York‚to‚San Francisco run last spring as a 14,000-mile shakedown for the BOC. That voyage left her extraordinary abilities written on the wind. The trip, which Autissier did with a crew of three men, shaved 14 days off the 76-day San Francisco record. Her run to Cape Town has established another new standard. But how did she do it? "Obviously, 1,200 miles is just an incomprehensible lead in a 7,000-mile leg," said Schrader. "If it was just one factor-the person, the boat, or the tactics-her margin of winning would be very small. But it was all of that."
Her boat, built with an innovative swing keel, is undeniably fast. And she is an astute student of weather, having been trained in meteorology in France for a year before the race. But beyond that, she exudes confidence, and has proved that she is willing to trust her own judgment. "There was a point in time where she risked it all," said Schrader, referring to Autissier's bold decision about 2,500 miles from Cape Town to head into an area where there are usually calms. "She saw something there that no one else saw," he said. "She was going to win, and win big, or lose it all."
Isabelle Autissier - Around The World
Autissier entered the 1990-91 running of the BOC around-the-world yacht race, the first woman to compete in the contest. The grueling race, which has been renamed Around Alone, is run every four years and requires sailors to travel 27,000 miles over eight months. It begins and ends on the East Coast of the United States, with stops in South Africa, Australia, and Uruguay. During the second leg of the race, Autissier's 60-foot yacht, named Ecureuil Poitou-Charentes, lost its mast in rough seas and high winds as she neared Australia. She fashioned a makeshift rig, limped into port, made repairs, and set out again. She completed the voyage, finishing seventh. It was the first time a woman sailor had circumnavigated the globe alone. "It was wonderful because I discovered everything: I discovered sailing alone for a long time, the Southern Ocean, everything," Autissier said in a Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service article. "It was really a wonderful experience.… I came back to Newport (Rhode Island) and … I thought: I did what I have wanted to do in life. Since I was a little girl, I wanted to sail around the world, and now I have done it. The rest of my life is extra."
Autissier again displayed her sailing prowess—including expert understanding of weather patterns, currents, and navigation—while setting a world record in the spring of 1994. She and a three-man crew piloted her new yacht, the Ecureuil Poitou-Charentes 2, around Cape Horn from New York to San Francisco in just sixty-two days, five hours, and fifty-five minutes—beating the old record by two weeks.
No comments:
Post a Comment