Two very brave ladies challenge the oceans

Hats off to two brave ladies out there on the ocean blue, one enjoying success and the other rescued after a very scary storm nightmare and now on her way home.

Susie Goodall was competing in the singlehanded and rather eccentric, old-fashioned Golden Globe

race. According to news reports, her yacht was apparently pitch-poled about 2,000 miles from the Cape Horn.

I say ‘apparently’ because my old profession seems particularly ill-informed when it comes to seafaring mishaps. Journos, I regret to admit, tend to be landlubbers ... and how.

Real guts

However, to sail on your own very far from land requires real guts, and especially so when you’re not even 30.

Usually, our species needs quite a few more years to give us the cool to approach calamity with an analytical mind.

And a member of the opposite gender! It is extraordinary, as the gal herself must be. As if to prove how amazing is that gender, how anything men can do they can do as well, the second lady is the extraordinary Jeanne Socrates, a mere 77, getting close to Cape Horn at this very moment.

 Jeanne wants to establish herself as the oldest Cape Horner.

The most mature

Perhaps given the politeness her gender usually receives, I should describe her ambition as wanting to be most mature Cape Horner.

And she is doing really well. Quite unusually, she decided to sail from the Pacific coast of the US. She’s sailed down to the Equator, found her way through the Doldrums to the South Pacific and is now in the rather scary and very grown-up Southern Ocean.

Announcements for the good lady and her very smart 38-footer, Nereida, spell out her courageous ambition, to be the oldest woman to sail solo non-stop and unassisted around the world, and the first woman to sail solo non-stop unassisted around the world from North America.

In my book of my Cape Horner voyage, Loner (Hodder and Stoughton), I told how challenging it is to circumnavigate solo.
Continues on the blogs for my ocean sailing adventure book, Sailing to Purgatory, at SailingToPurgatory.com