Reader Rant

Mad Russian

Fedor Konykhov, who had apparently achieved great heights in mountain climbing, rowing and other forms of adventure sports, exhibited over the years the propensity to use mischaracterizations and probable lies to justify his ill-conceived efforts at ocean racing. As his son has been and remains the campaign manager and primary liaison with the international press, makes it for an interesting family tradition.

Not only has Fedor failed to complete every single-handed long distance yacht race he entered, he created a large amount of publicity in Russia and Europe based on potentially false reports, misstatements of facts and carefully or not so carefully-worded PR releases. The story of a whale hopping up on deck of his yacht in the Around Alone race was amusing to his fellow competitors, entertaining for Russian news media, cute if he did not want people to believe it, but remained largely harmless.

His latest effort to complete the "fastest single-handed nonstop round the world voyage," does not even elevate to a level of a good joke. Having been known for very sketchy PR statements, the latest (which can be found here on his site) coming from his camp is simply astounding.

First and foremost, despite his assertions, Fedor has no intentions "to break the record for the fastest single-handed non stop round the world voyage" since, according to the same PR statement, "Fedor expects to complete his journey in 120 days." Some very slow boats in the last Vendee 2000 edition finished the nonstop round the world voyage in less time. The winning Vendee 2000 boat won the race in 93 days, which was later bettered by Francis Joyon at just over 72 days. In 1991 Christophe Augin took just over 120 days to sail from Newport to Newport with 4 stopovers on an Open 60 mono. Ironically, Fedor's departure on this voyage to failure coincided with the start of Ellen McArthur attempt to better Joyon's time.

The mention of Francis Joyon brings our attention to another lie in Fedor's PR statement, which says that this is "the first time that a yacht of this size [85 feet] has been sailed single-handed." While arguably a trimaran is not a "yacht," Joyon's IDEC trimaran is approximately 10 feet longer than Fedor's monohull, not to mention the 100+ foot monsters of the old single-handed Transat days.

And finally, in a desperate effort to add credibility to this effort at failure, the PR statement boasts that "Fedor Konyukhov already holds the record for the fastest transatlantic crossing from Plymouth to Boston which he completed in 14 days and 7 hours." A quick scan of Transat 2004 results indicates that 7 Open 60 monos beat Fedor's claimed time while sailing within a race. But, surprisingly, that's not the lie. The real truth can be found in Fedor's own bio, where he states that in 2004 he sailed "from Canary island (La Gomera) to Barbados (Port St. Charles)" and thus became the "fastest single-handed ocean crossing on a maxi monohull - 14 days, 7 hours." Clearly, the trade winds route allegedly sailed by Fedor cannot be confused with the bashing and banging upwind race from Plymouth to Boston.

Fedor needs to get a grip on reality and stop being such an embarrassment in his futile attempts at single-handed ocean racing. I did hear, however, that he brought his frying pan and all winch handles fit the winches.

11/30/04