Sailor in the Spotlight Interview - Adrian Flanagan

Imagine choosing the most difficult route around the world possible, finding a boat capable of the trip, and then sailing off solo just to see if you can make it. Adrian Flanagan did all those things, and a few weeks ago he did one more: On May 21, 2008, Adrian tied the knot on the most difficult route imaginable - over Russia, under the Horn (the hard way), and all the way around the Earth's axis - he made it!

One can't truly travel the Earth's circumference by boat, as all those continents and ice masses impede a direct route. What we call circumnavigation refers, generally, to a boat passing through all degrees of longitude, and this is why circumnavigating Antarctica is considered rounding the globe. In 1974, Kenichi Horie rounded North and South America in what was referred to as the first "vertical" circumnavigation, but his route did not pass around the Earth's axis. Adrian's did, and with this route he's set a new world record.

Trapped by Arctic ice, chased by pirates off Brazil, two knock-downs around Cape Horn and at one point swept overboard, Adrian's story is dramatic in the extreme. Yet like many remarkable individuals, he sailed home with little fanfare, and so broke he's immediately had to set about getting his 38' custom stainless steel sloop ready for sale. Though he's writing a book on the journey due out in October (entitled Over the Top), it appears that Adrian, like most solo adventurers, did this all simply 'because it was there.' The man who girdled the globe the hard way, Adrian Flanagan is this week's Sailor in the Spotlight.

We talked with Adrian back home in the UK.

YP: First of all, Congratulations on completing your vertical circumnavigation!

AF: Thanks, it's good to be back, and a great relief.

 

YP: So, "vertical circumnavigation," could you explain that?

AF: Traditionally, circumnavigation has been primarily West to East or East to West, so the traditional route was below the great capes: Cape Leeuwin, Cape Horn, and the Cape of Good Hope. A vertical circumnavigation is effectively the great circle where the primary direction is North and South. A circumnavigation, either horizontally - East-West - or vertically, should try and shape itself as closely as possible to a great circle. Now a pure great circle is impossible to sail, because land gets in the way. There's no where on Earth in any direction where you can sail a great circle without interruption by land. Now a vertical Circumnavigation is where the primary directional movement of the boat is North-South rather than East West.

 

Adrian's planned route

YP: So, you just chose a route, and went around the land masses as close as possible?

AF: What you've got to do is try and get as many pairs of antipodal points as possible along your track. I mean, I had one pair - that's the minimum that's needed. These are two points on the Earth's surface diametrically opposed to one another. If you take a stick, and shove it through the Earth so that it passes right through the center, where that stick enters the Earth is antipodal to where it exits - 180 degrees around the other side.

The more pairs of antipodal points you have on your track, the closer your track is to a great circle. For example, back in the 1500's when Magellan went 'round the world, and Victoria became the first ship ever to circumnavigate the Earth, they had, I think, four or five pairs of antipodal points on their track. The Grandfather of single-handed sailing is an American, Joshua Slocum - he had five pairs of antipodal points on his voyage in Spray. I had one.

One of the absolute requirements for a circumnavigation is to cross every line of longitude on the Earth. If you look at my track, I went from the UK, South to the bottom of the Atlantic, around Cape Horn, and then North all the way up the Pacific to the Bering straight. I did take a detour towards Japan to make an antipodal point - my selected antipodal point - which is diametrically opposed to a point I passed off the coast of Brazil. Then from the Bering straight I went over the top of Russia, and then back down to the UK. And so if you can imagine, it's like a vertical circle around the Earth.

 

YP: So why did you want to do this? I mean, everyone wants to go around in nice weather through the canals, or fast around the Southern oceans. Why did you want to pick basically the worst cruising route you could choose?

AF: Well the people who want to sail in the most beautiful weather are very, very sensible. That's all I can say! [laughing] No, what inspired me to want to sail around the world in the first place is, as a 15-year-old schoolboy, I read Sir Francis Chichester's book Gypsy Moth circles the world. To remind your readers, in '66-/67, Chichester went 'round the world making only one stop, so that raised the bar, and then the question became: Can anyone go around the world, by themselves, without stopping? [1968, Robin Knox-Johnston]

Anyway, I read Chichester's book in 1975, and for some reason - I'm not sure why - something clicked. It triggered a reaction in me; I was just very excited about the whole idea and prospect of the self-reliance, of being alone at sea, you know, the sheer beauty of being propelled by the wind. The whole thing seemed, in my adolescent imagination, to be very exciting. The adventure of it, and the self-reliance and the beauty of it - and the physical challenge as well. All of these things sort of came together and crystallized as an ambition to one day sail a single-handed circumnavigation.

 

 

 

YP: So, how did it go from an ambition - an idea in your head - to something you could actually do? How did you get the boat, and the money to do it?

AF: A lot of people have said "you've done this all back to front. You got married, and had the kids, and then you went off and did something that you should really do as a single man when you have less responsibility." And that's absolutely right, but at the end of the day, it all comes down to money. I could never afford to do it.

Now, I knew from way back that the chances of being sponsored on a voyage of this type were close to zero. There are loads of opportunities for corporate sponsors to put their money where it's safe - no one's going to die. But the single-handed guy in a boat not involved in a race, with a high risk - there's no way a corporation is going to put money in that. As one company said to me "If you succeed, we're going to regret that we didn't do it, but what we don't want is images of a body being fished from the water with our logo on your boat," and I can understand that.

So, I had to pay for the whole thing myself, and I wasn't, until relatively recently, in a position to do that. And even then, you know, I had to mortgage my house, I had to use all my life's savings, and I was on a pretty small budget. So one day, I just woke up. I sat at my desk, and I made the decision, and the decision was "right, I'm going to do this." It was November the 30th, 2003, and I can see that day as if it was yesterday.

 

YP: You and your family made personal sacrifices as well, right? How is it that your ex-wife, Louise, became the expedition manager?

AF: Louise is very talented in her own right. I knew that if she agreed to be the expedition manager, then it would be a huge weight off my mind. It took me well over a year to persuade her to do so. She was initially very against the whole idea. Because the children were very young, she thought it was very irresponsible. But I knew that if she did eventually take it on, and she began to understand my dream, as it were, that she would embrace it too. I knew that - I knew her that well - and that is exactly what happened.

I think it would be fair to say that without Louise's involvement, I would not have succeeded. It was Louise who got the Russian Government to give me permission. You know, she's a housewife, in a little village, in the home counties outside London, but she got the highest officers of the British government talking to the highest officers in Russia. She involved the United Nations at a very senior level, the International Maritime Organization - she pulled the whole thing off, and I simply wouldn't have been able to do it. So the success that we had with completing the first vertical circumnavigation, frankly, is as much her's as it is mine.

 

YP: You had some very trying times in your 405 days. Two knockdowns around the horn, pursued by pirates. Can you tell me about when you fell overboard?

AF: In 400 days, it ain't gonna be smooth all the way. And yeah, I had some very, very bad times, but I had very good times, and like life, at the end of the day, it was all balanced. On the fifth day, I was washed off the boat; I did not have a lifeline attached. I was in 50 mph winds, 25 foot seas, and I was completely separated from my vessel.

I had gone on deck, I was in storm force 10 conditions off the Cornish coast, in very busy shipping lanes. I was in very, very reduced visibility, I was basically watching the radar, the boat was sailing herself on self-steering gear. I had various shipping contacts on the radar, and I had to adjust my course by 10 degrees, which meant going up on deck. I had to just make a quick adjustment to the self-steering gear, by pulling a control line which I'd led back into the cockpit, but it was attached to the guard rail. I put one foot on the side deck, and reached for the control line to make the adjustment, and I never saw the wave coming... I don't know what happened.

The next thing I knew, I was over the side. I was supposed to be on deck for five seconds, and that's why I didn't have a life-jacket or a safety harness on. I mean it was careless, and sloppy, but it was what it was. When I was in the water, I knew with absolute certainty that my death had arrived. As certain as you are that the Sun will rise tomorrow, I knew that I was going to die, and I felt quite calm - quite relieved, actually... bizarrely - because I knew that there was absolutely nothing I could do. I worked out later that the boat would have been out of reach in 0.92 seconds.

Basically, what happened is that a wave picked me up and put me on the afterdeck. I'll tell you something that I've never told anybody: In 50 mile per hour winds, I had my sails shortened right down to storm sails, but she was still making five to six knots, and in the moment I went over the side the boat stopped. Don't ask me to explain it. I mean, the boat was alive. There's no question that I owe that boat my life. The boat stopped, I got back on, and she carried on.

 

 

YP: I've never known a solo sailor who took a boat on a long voyage who didn't feel something like a romance with their vessel by the end. You almost sound like you've fallen in love with Barrabas, you've trusted her with your life, and yet you're selling her now?

AF: I have to, yeah. It's just a financial imperative. If there was any way to get out of selling her, of course I wouldn't. I definitely have a bond with her which is almost human. When you're in those big storms, and you're all alone, and you're miles from anywhere, and you're just getting the bejeezus kicked out of you - I mean keel-shuddering, jaw-shuddering bashes - you wonder how she's holding herself together. She did, and she came through it with absolutely no damage at all. I mean she was absolutely wonderful.

 

 

YP: What do you think the difference is between someone like you, who gets the idea in your head and just does it, and someone with the dream who never does it - who lets that idea sit in their head forever?

AF: Life is a game, and if you take life too seriously, you're going to lose the game. I came up with an expression: "to live, but not to dream is pointless. But to dream, and not to live it, is worse." If someone's got an idea, and they never act on it - they don't necessarily have to succeed, but they've got to try. I don't think that what I did is in any way extraordinary. I'm just an ordinary guy, I'm the guy next door. I'm not stronger than anybody else, I'm not more clever than anybody else, I'm not more talented than anyone else. But I had an idea and I followed through with it.

Maybe I've got more determination than other people, I don't know. But I really believe that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. I think that people who tend to fail in life, and the ones who lack fulfillment, are the ones that don't have an idea in the first place; they don't have a dream.

 

 

YP: And how does it feel to have accomplished your dream?

AF: Relief is the main emotion I feel. I'm not really one of those guys who punches the air and is in to triumphalism. But I feel it, and I feel it in the quiet moments. When I lay in bed at night, and that first few seconds of being awake, I just feel relief, and I feel like a burden has been lifted. I never felt that I had anything to prove to anybody else. Now that I've proved what I needed to prove to myself, I don't feel any urgency; I don't feel any desperation; I don't feel under pressure. I think that translates to something which I've never felt before, and in many ways it's the most valuable feeling you can have, and that's peace.

 

YP: What's your advice for people who want to follow their own dreams?

AF: Do it. And don't do it tomorrow, do it now. The hardest part of this Alpha Global Expedition was making the decision to do it. So my advice is literally: just do it. Don't think about it any more, do it.

 

- Kim Hampton for YachtPals.com

 

Read More Sailor in the Spotlight Interviews

Sir Robin Knox-Johnston
Sam Davies
Lin and Larry Pardey
Loick Peyron and more

 

 

Video: Adrian Flanagan's single-handed circumnavigation of the globe.

Submitted By YachtPals on 15 Jun

circumnavigating, circumnavigation, Adrian Flanagan, Over the top, sailing, sailboat, Adrian, Flanagan, Flanagan Adrian, sailor, boat, boats

Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome