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High Stakes on the High Seas
In 1998, on the day after Christmas, 115 sailboats crossed the starting line in Sydney, Australia, bound for Tasmania, a 630-mile dash across the Bass Strait, one of the world’s most treacherous bodies of water. The fabled Sydney to Hobart race went ahead despite predictions of hurricane force winds; when it was over, only 43 boats had crossed the finish line. Six sailors had died, more than fifty others had to be rescued, and 12 boats sank or had to be abandoned.
G. Bruce Knecht (MBA ’86), a Hong Kong-based foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, chronicles this disaster in a new book, The Proving Ground. Knecht made ten trips to Australia to research what it was like on board three of the boats, including Sayonara, skippered by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, one of the wealthiest men in the world. Knecht has written a real page-turner — “a sailing masterpiece...The Perfect Storm of blue-water sailboat racing,” says Walter Cronkite. The book captures the fury and drama of a killer storm at sea while illuminating the reasons why some people are driven to risk death in the name of recreation. Anticipating brisk sales, publisher Little Brown is planning a hefty first printing of the book, due out this month.
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