Alone on a wide wide sea

By ROBIN BAILEY

Most 16-year-old New Zealand boys are concerned about getting their first car and chatting up girls. At 16, Chris Sayer wanted to race around the world single-handed in a 60-foot yacht. He's 32 now, and contesting the Around Alone solo classic is still unfinished business.

The years he has spent pursuing that dream have led to some compelling adventures, notably the French-controlled Mini Transat race. His exploits are such that publisher HarperCollins commissioned a book about him. Titled Oceans Alone: Chris Sayer's solo adventures on the high seas, it is in book stores this month.

It is written by Rebecca Hayter, editor of Boating New Zealand magazine, who has been recording Sayer's adventures since he launched his first boat in 1996. That was Essentially, later renamed Navman when some sponsorship came on board.

Describing their first meeting, Hayter says she struggled to grasp the connection between the shy, awkward then 23-year-old and the extreme racing yacht he had created.

Like others who closely follow the top end of yachting, she watched as Sayer emerged from his shell to take an increasingly aggressive and proactive approach to his challenge.

At that time few New Zealanders knew much about the Mini Transat, the acknowledged stepping stone to Around Alone. Nor did they understand the demanding Mini Transat yachts.

Herself a competitive racer, Hayter was intrigued with the story and has sailed overnight on all three of Sayer's Mini Transat boats.

"Some of the time it is the most exciting sailing you can do," she says. "It has the feel of big-boat power but you are so close to the water, and so in touch with the boat that you feel every vibration, every nuance of speed. That's the good part. The other part is that if a simple tack or a gybe goes wrong the cockpit is suddenly vertical."

When Sayer launched his first 650 in 1996 he intended racing in the 1997 Mini Transat. A shortage of money and the need to radically lighten the boat put that deadline on hold. Instead, he worked for people who could teach him what he needed to know to rebuild the boat and sailed 12,000 ocean miles around the Pacific and New Zealand.

After he made it to France in 1999 and lined up his home-made wooden boat against the 70, mainly big-budget, European yachts, he was laughed at. Four thousand miles later and in third place at the finish line, Sayer had the last laugh.

He sold the yacht in Guadeloupe and returned to New Zealand. He hoped his performance would prove his point and open the door to the $4 million corporate sponsorship needed for a tilt at the Around Alone. Again he couldn't raise the money, but another Aucklander did, newcomer Graham Dalton in the HSBC-sponsored Open 60 Hexagon.

So Sayer began building another Mini Transat. This time, with top designer Brett Bakewell-White and some of our best boat-building brains on board, the boat was as sophisticated as the best of the French models.

Sayer raced that boat in the Round North Island Race and entered the two-handed Auckland-Sydney. That ended with a dismasting and, during the subsequent solo delivery voyage back to Auckland with a repaired rig, disaster struck again when he hit an unknown underwater object.

Then followed a headline-grabbing rescue drama in which Sayer did everything according to the book, but which he regarded as a failure because of his firm belief that solo sailors should be able to cope with every eventuality without calling on outside help.

Hayter knows the sailor well enough to capture his despair in the days following the loss of his boat, and his feelings as the yachting community got behind him after the decision was made to try again, even though time was short. He began building in August 2002 to get the boat to the start-line in September last year.

Further drama followed. The Classe Mini, which controls the race, changed the rules at the last minute, rendering him ineligible. Legal opinion said he could have taken them on in court to overturn the ruling. Sayer decided to make his statement on the water. He sailed as a pirate entry, led for most of the first leg and finished second. Gear damage at the start ofdelayed his start by eight hours, but he recovered sufficiently to win unofficial third place in the race.

Hayter believes Sayer will get to contest Around Alone in a New Zealand designed and built boat. The uncertainty is when.

* Chris Sayer will be at the New Zealand Boat Show between 1pm and 2pm today and tomorrow signing copies of Oceans Alone: Chris Sayer's solo adventures on the high seas and talking small-boat sailing.