STEELY RESOLVE
The first British Steel Challenge Race west-about around the world via the Great Capes was a oneoff back in 1992. Most people thought it was crazy to sail ‘the wrong way’ around the world, but the event proved otherwise. Four years on, it morphed into the BT Global Challenge and went on to great things. The race gave ordinary people – not highly paid professionals – the opportunity to find out what they were made of in the toughest school of all.
The ship-breaking windward passage around Cape Horn and the Southern Ocean tested skippers and crews to near-destruction and rig failure became endemic. In this account from her book, Woman of Steel, we hear from 32-year-old skipper Vivien Cherry about losing the main forestay on Coopers and Lybrand. An engineer by trade, she and her team worked out how to jury-rig the boat with almost zero suitable hardware so it could still be sailed hard. And sail hard they surely did, into a creditable 4th overall out of 10 boats. Great seamanship at its finest.
Sunday 6 December found us tramping along making 9 knots. Robert, who was helming,
