Portimao Global Ocean Race- Jeremy Salvesen's circle

by Oliver Dewar on 30 Jan 2009
On 21st January, two British sailors competing in the double-handed class of the round-the-world Portimão Global Ocean Race crossed the Wellington finish line of Leg 2 from South Africa to New Zealand after 37 days and 6,900 miles of racing through the Southern Ocean. Jeremy Salvesen and co-skipper David Thomson finished in third place on their forty foot, Class 40 yacht after sustaining severe damage in a string of intense low pressure systems in the Indian Ocean’s high latitudes delivering hurricane force winds reaching 80 knots.

While many of the seven skippers racing are highly experienced offshore yachtsmen, Salvesen was a complete sailing novice until a chance encounter in Wellington five years ago launched the British entrepreneur into the toughest division of yacht racing.

'My brother had emigrated out to South Island about five years ago and I came out to Wellington to visit him,' recalls Salvesen in Wellington. 'At the time, the idea was to just get a helicopter over to meet him, but the flight was rained-off, so I was stuck in Wellington, which was great.' The 2004 trip coincided with the stop over of Sir Chay Blyth’s, round-the-world Global Challenge Race and Salvesen had unintentionally landed right in the event’s epicentre. 'I woke up in the morning, and outside the hotel, where the Portimão Global Ocean Race boats are berthed now, were half a dozen Global Challenge yachts that had arrived overnight,' he continues. 'Curiosity got the better of me and I talked with some of the crew and then asked how I could do it. Literally, just like that, I changed my life on the spot.' Salvesen admits that the whole sailing environment was alien, but the seed was firmly planted: 'I had never been on a boat in my life before and never even contemplated sailing,' he admits. 'But I thought what they were doing was a really amazing thing. They were going the wrong way round the world in big, fully crewed boats.'

In 1971, Chay Blyth became the first person to sail single-handed, non-stop around the world from east to west, ‘the wrong way’, against the prevailing wind and currents. Eighteen years later, he set up Challenge Business providing amateur sailors with the opportunity to sail around the world on fully-crewed, evenly-matched boats with the first edition running throughout 1992-93. 'So, within a month of getting home, I went down to a presentation by Sir Chay Blyth, signed all the papers to do the whole thing and started my sail training and here I am - sort of full circle - right back in Wellington. Now I’ve got my own boat, parked up exactly where the Global Challenge boats were moored five years ago.'

As a highly-successful entrepreneur, Salvesen needed to plan ahead and match the reality of undertaking a round-the-world race with his business interests. 'All the crew volunteers for the Global Challenge make a five-year life plan,' he explains. 'I made the decision in 2004 and we were all planning to do the 2008-09 race. Taking a year out of your life is hard, but if you’ve got four years notice, then it’s more achievable. Particularly when you’re working for yourself, you should be able to get your ducks in a row and sort out your business and your house and so on.' Once committed to the event, Salvesen engaged fully in pre-race preparation: 'I’d thrown myself pretty heavily into all the training and learning how to sail,' the British skipper continues. There was, however, one drawback: 'The Challenge Business was really good at teaching you how to sail boats their way,' he remembers. 'But if you wanted to actually learn anything about the theory, the tactics or the weather or anything else that goes with sailing, then you had to go and do it yourself.' Consequently, Salvesen decided to push himself further: 'I did my RYA Day Skipper course, then my Yachtmaster exam and tried to aspire to be a little bit more than just the ‘grind monkey’ on the Global Challenge boats; a watch leader or something a bit more involved with the racing.'

However, forces beyond Salvesen’s control were conspiring to sink his plans. The 2004-05 edition of the Global Challenge was run without a title sponsor and finances for the Southampton-based company looked shakey. Eventually, in the autumn of 2006, the administrators Grant Thornton UK LLP were called in and Challenge Business folded. 'Halfway through this, I got an email saying it was all off, the business had gone bust and the race was cancelled,' says Salvesen. 'My reaction to something like that is ‘I don’t think so!’ I’d made a five-year life plan and you can’t just abandon the idea when the rug has been pulled from beneath your feet.' His solution was to continue training gaining vital experience, buying a one year-old Class 40 racing yacht and entering the inaugural Portimão Global Ocean Race. 'The contrast between a 72ft, 45 ton, steel Global Challenge boat with a professional skipper and 18 crew, to being on this tiny little fibreglass, four and a half ton, forty-footer with just two of us is a pretty big leap,' he confirms. 'But it was the only way I could achieve what I wanted to do.'

With almost half of the circumnavigation completed, Salvesen is already feeling the effects of this staggering life-change: 'It was always my intention to sail around the planet and tick that box and then maybe go back to doing something else. But going back to the old life of sitting behind a desk in an office from 9-5 having done something like this is incomprehensible.'

In the recent leg of the race, Salvesen and his co-skipper consistently sailed south of the fleet in the Roaring Forties and readjustment once the race is completed may present problems: 'I’m not really sure that anybody makes it back into the old mould,' believes Salvesen. 'There’s just too much adrenaline flowing around you, you’ve seen too much excitement, too much life to return to that rather sedentary, pen-pushing existence. I think it’s unlikely that I’ll ever sail round the world again, but I just don’t know.' This dilemma, for the moment, is secondary to the personal sense of success in completing the first two legs of the event against some very high odds: 'I can demonstrate to myself and to other people – to my children in particular – that anybody in this life can achieve amazing things,' he says. 'If you’re prepared to get off your butt and throw everything at it and have the determination, the guts and the drive, you can conquer your own Everest.'

While Salvesen, his co-skipper and the five fellow competitors in the Portimão Global Ocean Race prepare for Leg 3 from Wellington to Brazil, work is underway on Team Mowgli to repair the damage sustained in Southern Ocean gales during Christmas and New Year: 'We’ve got a fantastic team of people down here,' reports Salvesen.

'Wellington is such a centre of global sailing, not just in terms of a destination for round-the-world races over the years, but the local boat building expertise. We’re working with Hakes Marine and they have an enormous depth of experience in working on round-the-world race boats and the same goes for the rigging guys and the electronics guys.' Repair work includes replacing the yachts pushpit, ripped from the stern by a huge following wave and work on the cracked boom that seriously limited the boat’s performance and general sailing ability. 'We’ve got a job list about six feet long right now,' he admits. 'But every job is now allocated to someone who has the right skill set and wherewithal to deal with the issues, some of which are really big, and many of which are really minor. We’re feeling quite confident and relaxed about it all.'

http://www.portimaorace.com