Blowing his horn and chasing Cape Horn dreams, Harry [Mitchell] sails out of Charleston on September 17 1994. 'For the rest of your life don't waste any time. M

Blowing his horn and chasing Cape Horn dreams, Harry [Mitchell] sails out of Charleston on September 17 1994. 'For the rest of your life don't waste any time. Make the best of what you may before you turn into clay,' he told students before he left Sydney for the Southern Ocean. (Harry Mitchell, age 70, was lost at sea in the Southern Ocean in the 1994 BOC solo around the world yacht race). -- Paul Gelder, The Loneliest Race I began to understand the struggle and the despair in the simply written ships' journals, in the monochrome prose that could suddenly bloom with feeling: March 29, 1913: Terrible heavy NW gale. Lost mizzen upper topsail and main lower top gallant sail. Got two men hurt. All hands on deck all night. 30th. 6 AM: quick shift from NW to SW with hurricane force, with terrible heavy cross sea. Ship under two lower topsails and under water. Lost outer jib. Washed off the boom. 31st: wind SW. Very heavy gale. April 1st: terrible heavy WNW gale, ship under two lower topsails and drifting to the eastward, and my heart is broken under these heavy gales all the time. So reads the log of the Edward Sewell, 263 days out from Philadelphia to Honolulu, battering to westward in the grip of The Horn for 67 days. -- David and Dan Hayes, My Old Man and The Sea