Yachting: Set for solo challenge

Contemplating the months of peril, fatigue and solitude ahead, Chris Stanmore-Major seems perfectly sanguine. "I know I'm not going to go nuts," he says lightly.

Well, no, of course not. It's a bit late for that. You would only embrace an enterprise like this if you were nuts already.

Today Stanmore-Major will steer a 60ft yacht, Spartan, out of this elegant old port for the first leg of the Velux 5 Oceans, the quadrennial, solo, round-the-world challenge that has claimed the lives of three out of just 123 starters since 1982.

Spartan, under a different name, was first home 12 years ago for an Italian, Giovanni Soldini. In 2006 she safely completed for the old man of the sea, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, in his 68th year.

Stanmore-Major, in contrast, is a solo novice. But with only four rivals taking up the challenge, and having recently skippered 18 amateurs in the Clipper series, the 32-year-old hopes to become the first Briton to win such a race.

"I might have limited experience but I've always been a student of the sea," he says. "The best prepared boat, the lightest boat, the most technically proficient skipper is going to get to the front.

"But as the barometer falls, it's the wisdom of the ages that will keep you safe. There's nothing new. Every situation has been faced over the last 5000 years, and much wisdom passed down."

Round-the-clock responsibility for his Clipper crew accustomed Stanmore-Major to sleep deprivation, but other challenges are uncharted. Having started out as a tall-ship rigger, and spent several years as an Outward Bound instructor in Hong Kong, he will have no problem climbing the mast.

"But if you do that on your own, and get knocked out, the boat will just thrash you to death before you wake up again," he says. "It'll be the same going over the side, to fix things underwater.

"You have to separate yourself from the boat with just a thin piece of line, and have this nightmare of the boat sailing off without you. So physically there will be places I'm going to have to go that are very new. But the long slog, the mental side of it, I'm not so worried about."

In the 1998 race, Viktor Yazykov performed surgery on an elbow abscess with a scalpel, mirror and emailed instructions from a doctor.

"But if you tried to anticipate everything that might go wrong you might never do anything," Stanmore-Major says. "Fear makes you hold on harder, think faster, move quicker.

"With boats, when things go wrong, they tend to go wrong very quickly. But I'm not going to spend 10 months worrying about that.

"It's the boat that is your friend," he says. "The ocean has no personality. It's a barren wasteland, a faceless, unseeing enemy, that doesn't care whether you're there or not. All that keeps you safe is seamanship, awareness, and remaining humble in front of this overpowering force - being comfortable with what a tiny speck you are.

"When you get too big for your boots, when you start pushing beyond what's reasonable, things go wrong.

"The speeds you attain are pretty intoxicating. But there's another face to the sea, when there's no wind, it's hot, and you're just pirouetting in the wrong direction. Then there's the easy trimming, the dolphins and albatrosses and sunsets."

- Independent