Knox-Johnston Robin - Force of nature: racing around the world--a true story of courage and endurance

The whole boat shuddered as a wave broke over the bow, sending torrents of water crashing down the deck towards me. I instinctively grabbed a handhold as the boat recoiled but was knocked sideways by the force. I then ducked as the wave swept over me and into the cockpit, flooding it to deck level.

This was one of the worst storms I had encountered in more than fifty years at sea. When we had sailed from Bilbao at the start of the Velux 5 Oceans race, just thirty-six hours before, there had been a gale warning, but none of the weather programs had predicted anything this dramatic. My instruments on Saga Insurance were recording wind speeds of 50 knots and gusts of 72 knots. The experts, who were now safely at home tucked up in their beds, had been caught unawares, and it was we sailors who were paying the price.

There were six of us within a hundred miles of each other, and all of us were battling against the storm. After leaving Bilbao we had been racing towards Cape Finisterre at the western end of the Bay of Biscay when the wind began to increase. We could see it on our instruments, and even in the relative calm of the nav station we could feel our boats beginning to pitch and yaw more urgently and hear the wind noise through the rigging increase.

Our Open 60 yachts were designed to survive the storms of the Roaring Forties of the Southern Ocean. They are tough craft, developed for single-handers, and built to take a broach or have a huge wave break over them. But usually they run before the wind and waves. Here we werent running. We were battling into both.

Mine was the most exposed vessel in the fleet, since I was the furthest north and furthest from the coast. I had no protection from the land and there was nothing to temper the winds as they blasted straight at me from the south-west or the waves that were crashing in from the Atlantic.

I was also the least experienced in these boats. The others had owned their boats for much longer. I had not experienced a gale in this boat yet, let alone winds of this strength, and so was trying to assess how Saga Insurance was handling. Had I been in Suhaili, the little 32-foot wooden ketch that I had taken around the world thirty-eight years before, I would have known exactly what to do to make the boat and me safe and more comfortable in these conditions. But I had been sailing Open 60s for just five months, and despite having sailed 5,000 miles in Saga Insurance, I still had no idea what she was capable of or how she would behave when the seas turned angry.

This was a violent introduction, and there was no room for error.

I knew I had to get it right because if I didnt, and the boat became imperilled, my life would be threatened. I could draw on years of experience in handling boats from dinghies to monster multihulls, and sailing through both hurricanes and the maelstrom that can be the Southern Ocean, but it makes no difference how many years you have spent crossing the oceans. You never feel totally confident in your ability to survive a storm. There is always something you have not thought about, something that will surprise you. If you make a bad call, your life, your boat, everything is at risk.