G. Bruce Knecht: The Proving Ground

By JANE PHARE*

One might be forgiven for thinking foreign correspondent G. Bruce Knecht has missed the boat - if you'll excuse the pun - producing a late book about the disastrous 1998 Sydney to Hobart race.

Rob Mundle was quick off the mark with his book, Fatal Storm, out shortly after the race which claimed the lives of six sailors and caused the rescue of 55 others.

But like any gripping story, particularly one involving real-life drama, the 54th Sydney to Hobart is good enough to tell again in a different style.

Knecht's The Proving Ground is as gripping as Mundle's account, with the added dimension of what drives men, many of them rich and famous, to test themselves and their boats to the maximum. And what happens to those men when it all goes horribly wrong.

Knecht paints a picture of the strengths and weaknesses of character, the clash of strong personalities, reactions under prolonged pressure and the workings inside the minds of outwardly tough men. It is as much a story about humans under fire as a story about a storm and a yacht race.

Knecht concentrates largely on the owners and crew of three boats, Sayonara, Sword of Orion and Winston Churchill.

The Proving Ground opens with Sayonara's owner, software billionaire Larry Ellison, lying in his bunk calculating the likelihood that he would die. Driven by an almost pathological need to win, Ellison had hired a star cast including Chris Dickson and 10 former Team New Zealand members. Also on board was Lachlan Murdoch, son of media magnate Rupert Murdoch.

In marked contrast was Sword of Orion owner, pharmacist-turned- entrepreneur Rob Kothe, a novice sailor who was desperate to win the Sydney to Hobart. His nickname among the sailing fraternity was KO, short for Kooky Owner. It was aboard the Sword of Orion that the greatest personality clashes and indecision occurred. Crew member Glyn Charles, a British Olympic sailor who was a late addition, was washed away and drowned after the Sword capsized. The remaining crew were plucked from the sea in a dangerous rescue operation by navy helicopter crew.

Old-style yachtsman Richard Winning had spent $A250,000 rebuilding his classic wooden yacht, Winston Churchill. The Winston's crew abandoned their battered and sinking yacht and divided themselves between two liferafts. The rafts flipped, washing away three crew members.

Their stories, and the frantic, non-stop mission to save lives in the middle of a weather bomb, have been eloquently told by Knecht with a tense pace which gives the armchair sailor a sense of the fear and the drama without having to suffer the consequences.

Allen and Unwin

$29.95

* Jane Phare is an Auckland journalist.