By Laurie Fullerton

Newport, R.I. - While the Around Alone race has now packed up its last belongings out of the paint room of the Newport Shipyard in Newport, R.I., the memory of ten sailors entering Newport harbor one by one over the month of May, beginning with Swiss sailor Bernard Stamm on May 1 and ending with Canadian Derek Hatfield on May 31 gave New England sailors something much more interesting to talk about than the spring weather, which has been the worst on record in many years with many boats going in very late in the season.

Upon their arrival in chilly Newport, each Around Alone sailor had covered around 29,000 nautical miles, single-handedly, and the nine men and one woman who finished the race now total only 126 people in the world who have sailed single-handedly around the world. More people have been up in the space shuttle than on a solo circumnavigation.

While SA followed the course of some of the individuals involved in the race, including Bruce Schwab, Brad Van Liew, Tim Kent, Bernard Stamm and Emma Richards, the story of third place finisher in Class 2 Derek Hatfield, 50, of Canada is one of the most compelling in that he came the closest of all the competitors to losing his life. At least, he was in the most likely place and in the worst-case scenario to become washed overboard and lost at sea.

Hatfield sailed in an Open 40 Spirit of Canada and on the first leg of the race, from Newport (or New York City where the race had a brief stop and started again) to Torbay, England; he placed first in Class 2 beating the Open 50s. Steadily, he maintained a strong position in the first three legs of the race that had stops in Cape Town, South Africa and Tauranga, New Zealand but was not able to dominate the fleet. He, did, however, place third overall behind Open 50 sailors Brad Van Liew and Tim Kent respectively.

However, he had to be truly tested to get that, and the test came on Leg 4 from New Zealand to Brazil.

For Hatfield, disaster struck near Cape Horn and, in his case, disaster struck twice. Dismasted off Cape Horn and financially depleted, Hatfield limped into Ushuaia, a jumping off point in southern Argentina for Antarctic expeditions, where the wheels were set in motion for him to finish the race. It was there he recounted some of his amazing story of the 24 hours around his dismasting.

Just hours before Hatfield was pitch-poled by a "wave with his name on it," Hatfield had an equally terrifying experience that would unsettle the toughest sailor.

Hatfield said he was on deck hand steering towards the Cape, surfing on huge rollers that appeared on the edge of control as they ripped toward land in 60 to 65 mph winds. He could not exactly steer away from the waves, and in a sense they were pushing him along without much choice.

"If I tried to come up a degree or two they would threaten to capsize me, but I knew my course was good so I kept on hand steering and trying to avoid getting swamped," he said.

In the middle of the night, he was steering by feel and compass and had been unable to check his charts for hours.

"Suddenly, I saw a light off to starboard. I could not believe my eyes," he explained. "I was supposed to pass Cape Horn to starboard and that would mean that the light would have to be on port. I was frantic and could only think that my course had taken me north. I knew that if the light was to my right, land would be straight ahead."

As Hatfield tried to alter course, he was unable to shift course without capsizing.

"I was helpless," he said. "All I could do was brace myself for the inevitable. In a few minutes, I was certain I was going to crash into the back side of Cape Horn and I was powerless to do anything about it."

As Hatfield braced himself to be thrashed into the backside of Cape Horn, meeting certain death, when suddenly he passed the light to starboard.

"How could I have passed Cape Horn to starboard?" he asked himself. "You can only pass it to port coming from the west. I thought the wind must have changed and was blowing from the east, not the west. Somehow, I had already gone by the Horn and was now going back."

It was then that he realized that he had just become one of a long line of seafaring people who had mistaken the lighthouse on the rocky archipelago of Diego Ramirez, 30 miles west of Cape Horn for the back of Cape Horn.

"I was pretty sure at that moment that everything was about to come to an end," he said at that time. "The sheer panic and terror was the worst part. Thinking I was heading to the wrong side. When I pulled out the charts, it was an unbelievable relief."

However, hours later, Hatfield experienced his second near death experience in less than 24 hours.

It was just two hours after rounding Cape Horn, after his horrendous night, when Hatfield encountered "the wave with my name on it."

"I was ten miles south off Cape Horn and had rounded safely. It was sometime in the mid-afternoon when a wave came upon me from behind. I had just come on deck and had not strapped on my safety harness," Hatfield said. "In seconds, the boat was falling down off the face of the wave and the bow dug in as it flipped over [pitch-poled]. The next thing I knew I was in the water under the boat."

An end-over-end capsize off Cape Horn is the worst-case scenario, and while underwater for about 15 seconds and holding on, Hatfield could hear the loud, gurgling explosion of his mast snapping.

"When the mast broke, I was dragged back on deck. If the mast had not broken, I have no idea if I would have ever come back up again."

Once in Ushuaia, Andrew Pindar, corporate sponsor for the British sailor, Emma Richards, bought Hatfield a new mast. As other donations came in, particularly from Toronto residents, Gordon Crowe and Margaret Whitfield, were in Ushuaia on their way to the Antarctic on a tourist expedition. They gave him the moral support he needed to continue on.

"When I arrived in Ushuaia, Crowe stunned me by being there in the first place and by handing me all the money that he had in his possession," Hatfield said. "He simply said take it, you are going to need it to finish."

Hatfield was able to press on to Brazil, where he stopped for 48 hours and finished the final leg in 48 days, 21 hours, 56 minutes, 25 seconds.

When he reached the finish line on May 31 off Newport, R.I. his family scrambled aboard his Open 40 Spirit of Canada to greet him and someone handed him a beer. It is said that the Around Alone sailors all want a beer first off, and the New Brunswick native got his. When asked what it was, a chorus of New Brunswick Canadians answered as if in a commercial, "Alpine! You have to live here to get it."

As Around Alone organizer and former Whitbread sailor Brian Hancock teased him in Newport, saying he should get a t-shirt that said, "I survived Diego Ramirez only to be dismasted off Cape Horn," what is most amazing was that Derek didn't quit the whole ballgame but soldiered on.

"I now know that this is do-able and the high point is arriving here in Newport," he said. "It is unbelievable to see my family, my friends and all the people who came here."

" I think I was hell bent and determined to get here. Getting out of Ushuaia, and going back to that spot where I was dismasted was spooky. I had to force myself not to think about it. Towards the end, it has been hard to stay motivated as I was leaving Ushuaia when the rest of the fleet left Brazil. And, once everyone arrived it did get more difficult. I think I had this determination that came from this feeling that I did not want to fail and I didn't want to let all those people down who had helped me all along the way."

06/10/2003