randall reeves

ALL PHOTOS / RANDALL REEVES When I met up with Randall Reeves to be a certain milestone of readiness. in mid-September outside KKMI, he In the last few days, Reeves had been looked beat. taking a few shakedown cruises to test After sailing out the Golden Gate in various systems. October 2017, Reeves has been around We drove from KKMI to Point Richthe world, though not in the way he'd mond to grab a beer and some food, and intended. He was forced to make two after settling into a table in the loud, emergency pit crowded bar, Reeves stops — one in seemed a little inconUshuaia, Argentina, and the other "There's defi nitely an gruous in a place surrounded by so much in Hobart, Tas- element of wanting to humanity. This man mania — before finally abandon- be part of 'The Club.'" had spent nearly 10 months alone at sea, ing his attempt including four-plus to circumnavigate cold, wet months in the Southern Ocean, then sail up the the Southern Ocean — and he was about East Coast of the Americas, through the to do it all again. Reeves planned to set Northwest Passage and back to the Bay sail back out the Gate on September 30, Area, a route that he dubbed the Figure after we went to press. 8 Voyage. Having just returned to San "It's a privilege, this opportunity I Francisco in July, Reeves is basically on have to see the ocean," Randall said. another (albeit slightly longer) pit stop, When I fi rst met him in April 2017, I before making another 40,000-mile, presented him with that most trite and twice-around-the-world-in-one-season over-asked of questions, "Why? Why do attempt at the end of the month for the it?" Reeves always gravitated toward conFigure 8 Voyage 2.0. cepts like the challenge and the honor of In the days prior to meeting with me, just being there, of "seeing the big, bad Randall Reeves was still repairing dam- ocean on its own terms." Despite myself, age sustained in the high southern lati- I pressed him again, wanting to know tudes aboard his 41-ft aluminum expedi- exactly what he was "looking for." We at tion vessel, Mõli. He had just replaced a Latitude assume that sailors simply want panel of switches that had been soaked to sail, and live by a similar "because it's after the knockdown, when breaking there" ethos that many mountain climbseas smashed a window and fl ooded the ers subscribe to. But rather than the cabin in the Indian Ocean back in Febru- mundane question of why, I was curious ary. "I'm going to start loading the food instead how it might feel if he completed soon," he said, implying what seemed the Figure 8. What would that mean to

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.

him? How would he think of himself? "I can't imagine," said Reeves. "I've been going at this project for fi ve 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 fi rst 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 defi nitely 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

— and his prose in The Long Way. "He offered me coffee — black, instant, in a cup he'd just wiped out with a not-too-clean dishcloth wetted with a little spit — and he smoked his Gauloises the whole time. But reading Moitessier made me want to do something that was hard, a thing I'd thought up myself, and whose success or failure was only up to me. There's a certain 'in the footsteps of giants' aspect to the Figure 8, but when you are out there, there is no evidence anyone has gone before. It's just you and the ocean." As we drank, the original Golden Globe came up several times. "After the next trip, I'd like to reread Moitessier and Knox-Johnston and see how they went about their routines, see how our approaches differ and how my experience will differ." Also providing inspiration was Matt Rutherford's pioneering singlehanded nonstop voyage around the Americas in 2011. "I was returning from a two-year Pacifi c cruise when I heard about Rutherford. It occurred to me that you could put these two voyages together — the Southern Ocean loop and the Northwest Passage — and have a super-long, super-interesting, super-unusual endeavor that might be more interesting to a wider audience than just another guy going around the world via the Southern Ocean," Reeves said last year. After being forced to make his second pit stop in Hobart, Tasmania, and while contemplating the fate of the fi rst Figure 8, Reeves expressed what the voyage meant to him. He considered pushing through last April, but that would have put him at Cape Horn close to winter, and would have left no margin for error in his passage up the Atlantic for an August arrival at the entrance to the Northwest Passage. "I'd proven I was good at error, and having a fl awless second half cruise seemed doubtful." Reeves also considered hanging out in Tasmania and New Zealand before continuing on to the Horn at the end of the year, but decided against that as well. "It's personal and diffi cult to convey," he wrote on his widely read blog. "A long stay in Hobart would have been fun, but, simply put, such an approach is not how I envisioned the Figure 8. The double loop is meant to be completed in a year. It's an Everest-type attempt, not a sightseeing tour."

Randall Reeves has an explorer's spirit. On his blog, he writes often about birds, sea life and remote islands. "Wild places," he said of the Crozet Islands in the Southern Ocean, as he passed south of the archipelago in February. "I didn't expect to see land, and it's an emotional shock. Exciting. Eerie. Then, suddenly the islands are swallowed by cloud. But their evidence is all around me in vastly increased bird life. I've seen my fi rst cape petrel and fi rst giant petrel, and then all the usual suspects, wandering albatross, black-browed albatross, white chinned

'Mōli' powering through big seas somewhere in the Southern Ocean.

When you're singlehanding around the world, you get good at taking selfi es. From left: Reeves provisions for the Figure 8 2.0; Reeves recentlyrepaired electrical damage from a harrowing knockdown in February; Reeves playing peek-a-boo at sea onboard 'Mōli'.

petrels, prions, skuas. Such riches here. An exciting day." And after ducking into the coast of Chile (on his way to Ushuaia, Argentina) in December to make repairs, Reeves marveled at his storied surroundings: "I'm well into Beagle Channel. Night is coming on. I am both fatigued and elated [Reeves had been hand-steering for a week and was awake for two solid days when he wrote this]. It's this place! Beagle Channel — the history of exploration respires from the rocks and glaciers. Just north of here Magellan was the fi rst to discover a strait cutting through from the Atlantic to the Pacifi c. The bay we entered was fi rst explored by Captain James Cook. The channel we transit was discovered by Captain Fitzroy and bears the name of his ship on which Charles Darwin was a passenger. I can almost see the HMS Beagle beating up day after day. South of here Drake went west looking for Spanish gold. Somewhere near here, Slocum spread tacks on the deck of Spray as protection against marauding Fuegans." During one of those "why do it" conversations last year, Reeves talked about the "non-human" world of the ocean — the utter wildness of it, in other words. He likened long ocean passages to space travel. At the bar, he gave the following example: "I was asleep in my bunk during a quiet night at sea in the doldrums; all the hatches were open. Suddenly, something hit me on my chest: A small bird, a storm petrel, had collided with a stay in the night and fallen into the boat. "I picked it up, held it in my hands, and realized that this creature, which spends 95% of its life on the wing at sea, had likely never, ever seen a human. We were equally alien to each other, and yet, we were part of the fabric of life at sea." Reeves marveled at the encounter. With fresh pints on the table, Randall told me about the years he'd spent working in San Francisco for a restaurant company. "I worked six days a week,” he said, "and on my day off, I would get in my truck and drive straight to West Marin. I'd sleep in my truck, and then go hiking all day.” It seemed as if he was talking about paying his dues — putting in the time in order to get where he wanted to be, both then and now. Reeves' fi rst boat was a Columbia 24 (the same as mine), but his fi rst bluewater boat was Murre, a 31-ft Far East Mariner that he would eventually singlehand around the Pacifi c over the course of two years. He started from Mexico in 2010 and sailed to French Polynesia and Hawaii, then on to Alaska, and back to San Francisco in 2012. The on-and-offthe-water adventures of Murre also led to Reeves' fi rst blog. His dispatches from the Figure 8 have been extremely popular among our readership — and the sailing world at large. "Telling the story is almost as much fun as having the adventure," Reeves said in a recent interview with a local news station in San Diego. The exact routine of sailing alone around the world is, as it turns out, endlessly fascinating. Reeves' blog chronicles . . . well, everything: The technical aspects of sailing and navigation, sleep cycles, dayto-day maintenance, the aforementioned ornithology, and provisioning — as well as meals while one is at sea with no refrigeration (making bread seems to be Randall's specialty). Reeves' appeal, in my opinion, is his relatability. He's humble but not self- deprecating. He talks about learning the countless lessons the ocean has to teach without diminishing his gusto or expertise. "I was attempting to carry wind and breaking seas too close to the beam; it was a wave that caught us dead on the fl ank that sent us over," Reeves wrote on his blog. "I'd had plenty of warning. We'd been hit hard several times. I just didn't know how to read the signs. Do now." Reeves also frequently discusses the rhythm and routine. "I think it was Patrick O'Brian who wrote about habit being so important to sailors. For me, the day's sun shots are at 10 a.m., noon and 2 p.m., and then I like to write at the same time every afternoon, usually between 4 and 6 p.m. And immediately after the log is sent in, I like to have my evening's one beer. Then I cook a hot dinner and start my sleep cycle almost immediately after doing dishes. That's the progression, day after day, and I don't like that to be interrupted. I guess it's a way of maintaining a sense of control in an environment I cannot control." It seems like many people — myself included — assume that if you're sailing alone around the world, you'll have plenty of time on your hands. And while there certainly may be some long solitary hours where the boat is in order, Reeves said that he was remarkably busy. "There's always something to do. The boat can always go a little faster or the Monitor windvane can be tweaked to better approximate my desired course; some chafe always needs tending to. On and on. Still, there's plenty of time to simply admire one's world." — latitude / tim

If you're interested in helping Randall Reeves fund his blog, go to www. gofundme.com/fi gure-8-voyage-20.