Knockdown: The Harrowing True Account of a Yacht Race Turned Deadly FROM THE PUBLISHER
In the extreme sport of blue water, or open ocean, yacht racing, the Sydney to Hobart challenge is considered one of the most treacherous races in the world. 1998 proved why. Slammed by a sudden freak storm that unleashed 90 mile-per-hour winds and waves 7 stories tall, 24 boats were abandoned at sea as 63 sailors fought for their lives. Amazingly, 57 were rescued, but 6 died, including two who were never found.
Premier adventure writer Martin Dugard takes us down 725 miles of Australia's eastern coast, and across the Bass Strait (known among sailors as "Hell on High Water"), as he re-creates the nightmare voyages of several ill-fated crews. Through interviews with racers, survivors, and devastated family members, he chronicles the emotional saga of the windswept sailors whose skill and daring were futile against the massive waves and unrelenting winds. He also probes the motivations of these unique individuals -- including CEOs and billionaires -- who risk all to challenge nature's indiscriminate fury. Gripping and thought-provoking, Knockdown is an unforgettable look at an exhilarating sport and its potentially tragic consequences.
SYNOPSIS
Along 735 miles of Australia's eastern coast lies one of the best-known -- and most treacherous -- yacht racing courses in the world.
On December 27, 1998, a freak storm unleashed 100 mph winds and dashed boats with waves eight stories tall; even the world's most skilled and experienced sailors faced the ultimate challenge: survival.
The deadly storm that struck them that day is only the beginning of their incredible story of heroism and adventure at sea.
FROM THE CRITICS
Mark Adams - GQ
At turns terrifying and heartbreaking, Knockdown should cement Dugard's
reputation as one of the finest adventure writers working today.
BookPage
The reader can only watch tensely as the sailors approach disaster....Dugard's book tells a thrilling tale of survival.
Washington Times
Thrilling....Slam-bang....Chilling accounts gathered from interviews, weather analysis, and the author's own extensive experience.
Publishers Weekly
As the second book to round the buoy toward publication after the disastrous 1998 Sydney-Hobart yacht race--in which six sailors died in a torrential freak storm that overtook 24 boats--Dugard's account, while full of its share of action, takes a more meditative tack than Rob Mundle's Fatal Storm (Forecasts, July 19). Focusing on 38-year-old Ed Psaltis and his yacht Midnight Rambler, which would eventually limp victoriously into Hobart, Dugard (Surviving the Toughest Race on Earth) probes the nature of adventure and the Australian men and women who seek it. Australia was founded by underdogs, he suggests, with an inveterate lust for the extreme. It's a culture in which "real sailors" make it a point of pride not to invest in life rafts, and where the etiquette of "gentlemen's racing" discourages skippers from sensibly removing their sails in vicious winds. In the heat of the Sydney-Hobart competition, Dugard notes, one boat unaccountably passed by the sinking Sword of Orion, ignoring Maydays and red flares from a stricken yacht that lost one sailor overboard who was never recovered. Amid such madness, Dugard pauses to give lay readers welcome explications of sailing jargon, as well as elementary lessons in the geometry--or perhaps it's really alchemy--of waveforms. He also dips into the blustery controversy surrounding Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, which many sailors blamed for offering sketchy details about a cyclone forecasters sensed was brewing. As in Fatal Storm, however, few lessons emerge from a tragedy that seems only to make the danger of blue-water racing all the more seductive. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Adventurer Dugard (Surviving the Toughest Race on Earth, 1998) tells the story of the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, a sailing event with the appeal of playing Russian roulette with all the chambers loaded. The Sydney to Hobart challenge, which crosses Bass Strait, a notoriously unpredictable piece of water, is one of those hellacious blue-water yacht races that have found fashion in the past few years, though the Syd-Hob is now 50 years old and has already known tragedy. In 1998, the freaky weather that characterizes the Bass Strait was at its freakiest, with three thuggish weather systems converging just as the race got underway the day after Christmas. Rumors were flying before the sailors left Sydney that a bad storm was brewing. The contestants sailed anyway, suggests Dugard, because they were cut from a different cloth: "It's a gift to be born a natural adventurer. It's genetic, with one brother getting the adventure gene and another bestowed philately." When the storm finally overtook the racers out in the strait, tending a stamp collection ashore must have looked like a happy alternative. Ninety-foot waves knocked down boat after boat, great green rogues that sprang willy-nilly from the bottom, slamming sailors face-first into the woodwork, throwing them overboard, drowning them. Dugard is not a pretty writer, but the storm is an ugly customer too, and the bluster of one seems to feed on the bluster of the other, keeping the action at a pitch. Australian search-and-rescue squads eventually pull scores of sailors from the drink, and Dugard quietly conveys the heroism he had draped on the shoulders of the sailors to those of the seamen who have a more noble approach torisk. A thirst for adventure simply doesn't explain the madness of sailing into a forewarned gale on one of Earth's most potentially raging seas. Dugard, an aficiando of bravado, can't explain swagger when it goes pathological, even if it unfolds into a spell of a tale. (color photos, not seen)
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
At turns terrifying and heartbreaking, Knockdown should cement Dugard's reputation as one of the finest adventure writers working today. (Mark Adams of GQ Magazine) — Mark Adams
I devoured this book on a trans-Atlantic flight, and gave repeated, silent thanks we weren't sailing across the ocean. Dugard's dogged reporting gives us first-hand knowledge of the unholy convergence of factors that resulted in a once-in-a-century storm. He sweeps the reader along in a narrative that takes on the momentum of a gathering storm. (Austin Murphy of Sports Illustrated)
— Austin Murphy
When the waves start breaking, it's really hard to put this book down. The helicopter rescues; the desperate sailors hanging onto shredded life rafts; a doomed man fighting a losing battle in the open ocean. Knockdown is truly amazing. Anyone who considered sailing a peaceful sport should read this. In cold, clean language, Marty Dugard tells of boats getting batted around like baseballs and masts bending like coat hangers. He describes the greatest race on water and he explains the madness that forces sailors to compete in it. (Jody Berger of ESPN Magazine) — Jody Berger
The 1998 Sydney to Hobart Race took us beyond sport, beyond the drive to compete. We found ourselves at the edge of life and death survival. (Ed Psaltis, winning skipper of 1998 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race) — Ed Psaltis
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