Adolf Brelage

“But the worst that the wind did was to be the primary cause of a huge, vicious, boat-flipping, morale-shattering seaway. The helicopter pilots, who, while hovering, had to dodge them, said the waves were as high as fifty feet. If that estimate were true, it still misses the point, for the danger of the waves lay not in their height but in their shape. “At daybreak the seas were spectacular,” remembered Peter Bruce, a commander in the Royal Navy who was navigator in Eclipse. “They had become very large, very steep, and broke awkwardly, but the boat was handling well.” George Tinley, who had been so badly beaten around in his Windswept, later said, “There were seas coming at one angle with breakers on them, but there were seas coming at another angle also with breakers, and then there were the most fearsome things where the two met in the middle.” After the gale, Major Maclean vividly described the appearance of the waves at night: “All around were white horses with their spray flurrying horizontally and slashing against us with the added impetus of the occasional rain squalls. But these white horses were just the top of some monster waves which hunched up, their tops flaring with spume, and marched on leaving us high at one minute so we could glimpse around, and then bringing us some fifty feet down into their troughs so we could appreciate the enormity of the next wave following. Some waves had boiling foam all over them where they were moving through the break of a previous wave, or, when the foam had fizzled away, they were deep green from the disturbance of the water. Otherwise the sea was black.”
― John Rousmaniere, Fastnet, Force 10: The Deadliest Storm in the History of Modern Sailing

“Of course, for a seaman, next to being actually at sea, the greatest enjoyment comes from preparing the boat for a voyage.”
― Robin Knox-Johnston, A World of My Own: The First Ever Non-stop Solo Round the World Voyage

“My mother, when asked for her opinion of the voyage before I sailed, had replied that she considered it ‘totally irresponsible’ and on this Christmas Day I began to think she was right. I was sailing round the world simply because I bloody well wanted to – and, I realized, I was thoroughly enjoying myself.”
― Robin Knox-Johnston, A World of My Own: The First Ever Non-stop Solo Round the World Voyage

“There is an excellent prayer by John Davis, the Elizabethan seaman who, with his crew reduced to fifteen men from seventy-three, was beaten back three times into Magellan’s Strait: ‘May it please his Divine Majesty that we may rather proceed than otherwise; or, if it be his will, that our mortal being shall now take an end, I rather desire that it may be in proceeding than in returning’ . . . And I think I have troubles! But do appreciate the ‘proceeding than in returning’ part. What a man, and I cannot help thinking that my complaint about the wind seems absurd when you consider what he had to put up with – without complaining!”
― Robin Knox-Johnston, A World of My Own: The First Ever Non-stop Solo Round the World Voyage