Product Description

"Harrowing shoreside reading."­­Booklist

"Should be required reading for all ocean sailors."­­Library Journal

The first book to recount the disastrous events of the 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht race, Fatal Storm is sure to be a popular paperback selection. Rob Mundle takes readers through every white-knuckling hour of the gale that descended in the predawn hours of December 27, stretching over 900 miles from Australia to New Zealand, bringing with it hurricane strength winds and five-story waves. In all, 57 sailors were rescued, plucked from the decks of broken boats or from the sea itself under impossible conditions. Six sailors died.

A Sydney-Hobart Race veteran himself, Rob Mundle had total and unequaled access to the people behind the story. The result is a tale of extreme adventure, extraordinary will, and the overwhelming emotional tales of survivors, rescuers, and the bereaved.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #968124 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From Amazon.com
In the world of competitive off-shore sailing, Christmas Day is thought of as Boxing Day Eve--that is, the eve of the annual Sydney-to-Hobart Race. One of the world's three major offshore races (along with the Fastnet out of England and America's Newport Race to Bermuda), the 630-mile course from Sydney, Australia, to Hobart, Tasmania, is a test of skills, guts, and endurance in notoriously unpredictable, fickle waters--and in any weather.

On Boxing Day, 1998, the 115 boats jockeying at the starting line off Sydney's Nielsen Park Beach had been warned that low-pressure weather systems were conspiring to guarantee a wild and chancy race. Yet few sailors anticipated the ferocity of the storm that descended around two o'clock the next morning, whipping up gale-force winds and waves tall enough to send 25-ton yachts "spearing into midair," then "plunging down into the trough ... like repeatedly launching a truck off a 30-foot ramp and awaiting the crash." The race quickly devolved into the worst sailing disaster in recent memory. Seven crews abandoned their boats. Over 50 sailors were rescued under near-impossible circumstances. Seven died, and five boats sank. Journalist Rob Mundle follows the dramatic struggles in Fatal Storm, skillfully re-creating from firsthand accounts the stories of bravery, luck, and folly that left a handful of sailors convinced they'd never go near the Hobart again. Yet as one veteran yachtsman lived to point out, "It's something you just have to do.... You can't be under the illusion at any time that it is safe." --Svenja Soldovieri

From Publishers Weekly
Joining the summer's books on the treacherous Vend?e Globe sailing race (Derek Lundy's The Godforsaken Sea and Pete Goss's Close to Wind), Mundle's effort is the first of three forthcoming titles about the 1998 Sydney-Hobart yachting race (Pocket is publishing Martin Dugard's account in September; Little, Brown will offers Bruce Knecht's next year). In that race, seven boats were abandoned, five sank, six people died and 55 sailors were hoisted by rescuers from the impetuous seas. Seasoned journalist Mundle, himself a three-time Sydney-Hobart veteran, writes a knowledgeable account of the 115 boats and 1135 competitors that left Sydney Harbor on December 26, having precious little warning about the brutal cyclone that awaited them in the perilous Bass Strait. When the seas began towering to the height of five-story buildings, sailors were tossed about their yachts like rag dolls in a malevolent washing machine. Mundle, who covered the race for Australian television, deliberately sails around the tempest of controversies that followed the event, preferring to treat the story as a straight job of blow-by-blow reportage. While his careful plotting of a dozen boats' travails is certainly of interest, a surreal sense of dispassion pervades the text like an eerie calm found in the eye of a storm. Nonetheless, moments of poignancy stand out. One strung-out sailor hallucinates a monkey sitting atop a jagged stump of mast, while several others vow that spending hours in a wrecked cabin full of vomit, diesel fuel and salt-water convinced them to change their lives. "I've been a pretty selfish bastard," says one chastened survivor. "Just ask my wife." 40,000 first printing.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This is the first of several expected books about the disastrous 1998 Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race. Only 44 of the 115 yachts that started the race finished, five yachts sank, seven were abandoned, six sailors died, and 57 racers had to be rescued from the hurricane-strength winds and up to 90' swells. Mundle, a sailor and journalist who reported the awful tragedy live on Australian TV, relies on 124 interviews with survivors to relive the terror and excitement of a storm every bit as fierce as that described in Sebastian Junger's Perfect Storm (LJ 5/15/97). He discusses weather conditions and Australian search-and-rescue operations as well. Though it doesn't really offer any nautical advice on how to weather extreme conditions, as does K. Adlard Coles's classic Heavy Weather Sailing (LJ 10/1/68), this tale should warn offshore sailors that there are indeed times when even best craft can founder. Sure to be popular in public libraries, this should be required reading for all ocean sailors.AJohn Kenny, San Francisco P.L.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.