WASHINGTON—“Climbers do Everest, divers do the deep sea...sailors do the Whitbread,” says Paul Cayard in the May issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine.

A veteran of four America’s Cups and the holder of numerous yachting laurels, the San Francisco native is the skipper of EF Language, one of nine sloops in the 1997-98 Whitbread Round the World Race, currently progressing through its North American stages. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC focused on the wild ride through the violent seas of the southern Indian Ocean, one of the roughest legs of the eight-month race.

“NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC was interested in this race both because it uses the whole world for its course and also because we knew it would provide a spectacular story and pictures of amazing adventure,” said Peter Miller, the magazine’s adventure editor. “We were particularly interested in the ‘Southern Ocean,’ which everyone agrees is the most challenging part of the Whitbread. It is where sailors and boats are pushed to their limit as they race in winds of 50 miles (80.5 kilometers) per hour and waves of 30 feet (9 meters), dodging icebergs and whales.”

Cayard and EF Language are favored to win this year’s Whitbread, having held the overall lead for most of the race. But their success has not been easy.

A harrowing account of the endurance and determination of Cayard and his fellow sailors braving the Whitbread was written for NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC by Angus Phillips, Outdoor Editor at the Washington Post. Yachting specialty photographer Rick Tomlinson, who crewed on Cayard’s boat for the entire Indian Ocean leg, shot the pictures.

“The heart of the race has always been the two isolated legs through what many call the Southern Ocean, a frigid, spume-strewed ring of gale-force terror around the South Pole, where four Whitbread sailors have perished,” writes Phillips, who joined EF Language for the start and the finish of the leg between South Africa and Australia.

In ocean latitudes known as the roaring forties and furious fifties gales blow year-round and seas build to peaks so high that they’re known as the liquid Himalaya. Each 64-foot (19.5-meter) high-tech sloop which competes in the Whitbread has a water ballast system to help keep it flat and fast in the strongest winds. In big seas that can be dangerous as the vessel roars down waves so fast it plows into the next one ahead, sending a wall of icy water sweeping across the deck.

Racing 24 hours a day, the men and women competing in the Whitbread struggle in wet and bitter cold to keep their boats aligned correctly to wind and waves. Crew snatch sleep in shifts wearing all the clothing they have to ward off the cold. As the boats slam from wave to wave they take 10-minute meals of freeze-dried gruel squatting on their haunches. Eating is “like trying to eat a bowl of beans on a roller coaster,” says one crewman.

This is the seventh Whitbread, which has been held every four years since 1973. Named after its original sponsor, a British company, the race starts and finishes in England, traveling more than 31,000 nautical miles in nine legs. The three American ports of call during the race are Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Baltimore and Annapolis, Maryland.

The nine remaining Whitbread competitors left Fort Lauderdale on April 19 and have arrived in Baltimore. They head from Annapolis for France on May 3.

National Geographic has mounted an exhibit of Whitbread images, including several made by Tomlinson in the Southern Ocean, at the Phillips Harborplace Restaurant near where the sloops will be moored in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

National Geographic’s Explorers Hall museum in Washington is presenting an exhibit on the Whitbread to coincide with the race fleet’s visit to the Middle Atlantic region. The display includes a video show on the various legs of the race as well as items such as foul-weather suits worn by the sailors, a scale model of a Whitbread sloop and the race’s official flags.

Tomlinson will present a National Geographic lecture and show some of his images of his Whitbread experiences at the Society’s Grosvenor Auditorium on April 28 at 5:30 and 8 p.m. For tickets call +1 202 857 7700. The Society’s Web site also covers the Whitbread with dramatic photos by Tomlinson and an online forum inviting comment on the dangers of the race. The Web site can be found on www.nationalgeographic.com.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine, the official journal of the Society, is sent to nearly 9 million members each month and is read in every country in the world.

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April 24, 1998