The Proving Ground : The Inside Story of the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Race
InThe Proving Ground, journalist and lifelong sailor G. Bruce  Knecht tells the staggering story of the 54th Sydney to Hobart yacht race--an  annual event that is always an extreme test of courage and skill in some of the  world's most treacherous seas, but which in 1998 would become the most  disastrous race in modern yachting history.Although he was already fifty feet from the boat, Brownie didn't  have any trouble spotting Glyn. He looked small, and utterly helpless.... Glyn  was already having a hard time keeping his head out of the water, and everyone  quickly reached the same unthinkable conclusion--Glynn was going to die and there was nothing to do but watch.... Steve Kulmar was more shaken than anyone.  When he first came on deck, he believed Glyn was looking directly back at  him.Of the 115 boats that started under clear skies in Sydney, just 43 would finish.  Six sailors lost their lives, and a further 55 were plucked from the storm after  the fleet had been decimated by unforecast hurricane winds and 80-foot-high  waves.Knecht's style is novelistic, though measured, with a strong journalistic  sensibility marshaling what must have been at times appallingly poignant  eyewitness testimony into a coherent account of the disaster. His intended focus  is beyond the headlines, and by concentrating on the experiences of a handful of  individual crews,The Proving Groundsucceeds in conveying the agonies of  their desperate, sometimes futile struggles to survive--and offers some insight  into what drew them to the sea in the first place, and why so many of the  survivors have felt compelled to face it again. --Alex Hankin,  Amazon.co.uk