RANDALL REEVES ALL PHOTOS / RANDALL REEVES
W
hen I met up with Randall Reeves in mid-September outside KKMI, he looked beat. After sailing out the Golden Gate in October 2017, Reeves has been around the world, though not in the way he'd intended. He was forced to make two emergency pit stops — one in Ushuaia, Argentina, and the other in Hobart, Tasmania — before finally abandoning his attempt to circumnavigate the Southern Ocean, then sail up the East Coast of the Americas, through the Northwest Passage and back to the Bay Area, a route that he dubbed the Figure 8 Voyage. Having just returned to San Francisco in July, Reeves is basically on another (albeit slightly longer) pit stop, before making another 40,000-mile, twice-around-the-world-in-one-season attempt at the end of the month for the Figure 8 Voyage 2.0. In the days prior to meeting with me, Randall Reeves was still repairing damage sustained in the high southern latitudes aboard his 41-ft aluminum expedition vessel, Mõli. He had just replaced a panel of switches that had been soaked after the knockdown, when breaking seas smashed a window and flooded the cabin in the Indian Ocean back in February. "I'm going to start loading the food soon," he said, implying what seemed
to be a certain milestone of readiness. In the last few days, Reeves had been taking a few shakedown cruises to test various systems. We drove from KKMI to Point Richmond to grab a beer and some food, and after settling into a table in the loud, crowded bar, Reeves seemed a little incongruous in a place surrounded by so much humanity. This man had spent nearly 10 months alone at sea, including four -plus cold, wet months in the Southern Ocean — and he was about to do it all again. Reeves planned to set sail back out the Gate on September 30, after we went to press. "It's a privilege, this opportunity I have to see the ocean," Randall said. When I first met him in April 2017, I presented him with that most trite and over-asked of questions, "Why? Why do it?" Reeves always gravitated toward concepts like the challenge and the honor of just being there, of "seeing the big, bad ocean on its own terms." Despite myself, I pressed him again, wanting to know exactly what he was "looking for." We at Latitude assume that sailors simply want to sail, and live by a similar "because it's there" ethos that many mountain climbers subscribe to. But rather than the mundane question of why, I was curious instead how it might feel if he completed the Figure 8. What would that mean to
"There's definitely an element of wanting to be part of 'The Club.'"
Spread: Randall Reeves has his eyes on the prize to complete the Figure 8. Bottom: It was a bittersweet return to San Francisco in July for Reeves.
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• October, 2018
him? How would he think of himself? "I can't imagine," said Reeves. "I've been going at this project for five years, and right now all my focus is on the route. I've got no sense of what comes after. I've just circumnavigated solo in three stops, but it doesn't feel that much of an accomplishment. If I can complete the Figure 8 as planned this second time, I'll probably be telling you next year that it was easy, anyone could do it. And I'll be right. Accomplishment is a matter of setting your mind to it. The rest follows." At a recent lecture he'd given at a conference in San Francisco, Reeves explained how rare such sailing attempts are. As many as 6,000 climbers have summited Mt. Everest; 600 astronauts have achieved at least an Earth orbit, but since Robin Knox-Johnston's first solo nonstop circumnavigation in 1969, only some 300 sailors have successfully duplicated his feat. After a few sips of beer and a little prodding, Reeves said: "There's definitely an element of wanting to be part of 'The Club.'" Reeves had been inspired by Bernard Moitessier — whom he'd met and interviewed in the '80s while the mystical Frenchman was moored in Glen Cove
