WALL OF TERROR : Encounter With a Tanker Nearly Ends Sailboarder’s Solo Atlantic Crossing

Stephane Peyron had heard tales of people’s lives passing before their eyes in moments of peril, but in his case, he saw a gigantic black wall moving from right to left.

“It was night, I was sleeping and everything was strapped on the deck,” the Frenchman said, recounting his recent transatlantic crossing on a sailboard.

“I was awakened by two huge waves. I tried to see what was happening, but I could see no stars, nothing, just a wall passing just near me. I thought I was perhaps going to lose (my) life in the next seconds.”

That worst moment occurred during the first week of Peyron’s 46-day, unescorted, solo sailboard crossing of the North Atlantic, and it was over before he knew what happened.

“I realized it was a tanker when I see the light at the back of the boat,” Peyron said, “and by then I was OK.”

He figures he was saved because his board was so light that the tanker’s huge bow wave pushed him out of its path.

“But that’s not very comforting when it’s happening,” Peyron said.

Peyron, who blew through Southern California on a media tour recently, made his trip on a 24-foot, custom-built craft. Its main similarity to conventional sailboards was its free-standing mast, which means that if the sailor isn’t holding it up to sail the boat, it falls down.

When the skipper decides to rest or take a nap, he drifts, which is what Peyron did much of the time.

So few would quibble that Peyron’s board was more like a boat, even if it does look like a kayak, with sleeping and storage compartments inside. Peyron also carried a satellite beacon for navigation and had a small rudder he could control with his foot.

The board had a dry weight of 260 pounds but, loaded with Peyron and supplies, weighed about half a ton when he sailed out of New York June 10 for La Rochelle on the Brittany coast of France.

The obvious question: Why?

“First, I belong to a big family of sailing people,” he said.

His older brothers, Bruno and Loic, raced single-handed across the same ocean in seagoing catamarans in 11 days last May, Bruno winning by 11 hours.

“I am the only one who wind surfs,” said Stephane, 26. “Since (I was) 12 years old.”

In 1979 he tried a more southerly crossing from Dakar on the western tip of Africa to the French island of Guadaloupe in the West Indies, alternating with three other sailors on the same conventional board in six-hour shifts, with an escort boat. But that effort was aborted about two days from the end when one of the other sailors got sick.

Last year, on a special tandem board, Peyron sailed double with a fellow Frenchman from Dakar to Guadaloupe to Miami to New York “and arrived under sail for the centennial of the Statue of Liberty,” he said, a nice touch to commemorate France’s gift to the U.S.

But finally, Peyron decided to dispense with the rest of the crew.

“I said to myself, ‘If it was possible for two, it’s possible alone--but this time on the north.’ ”

Peyron is 5 feet 10 inches and 140 pounds. He said he lost 10 pounds on the trip, so it’s apparent what he missed most.

“A good meal,” he said. “I am French.”

He ate a lot of unsalted, dehydrated food reconstituted with sea water, which restored the salt content if he mixed it just right--usually between 30% and 70% to his limited freshwater supply.

He wasn’t trying for a speed record.

“No, no, no,” he said. “Just to do it is enough.”

So he sailed as little as three hours some days, if the wind was too strong, or as many as 20 in the light, early going, trying to pace himself to finish. He thinks he averaged between six and eight hours of sailing a day.

At night he would lay down the mast and roll up the sail, stow them below and crawl into his bunk, with a bubble canopy closed over his head. That’s where he was during the encounter with the tanker.

His only other scary moment occurred when he fell overboard one day.

“When the board is drifting, even if you swim quick you can’t catch it,” he said.

But, as do many wise solo sailors, Peyron trailed a ski line behind his craft and grabbed it before it slipped away.

Because the board drifted free during his rest periods, his chart for the crossing measures about 3,300 miles in a constant zigzag. The straight-line distance is about 2,600.

“But when I drift, the wind is from northwest, west or southwest in the North Atlantic, so it would push me in the good direction,” Peyron said.

Along the way he saw only four ships--including the tanker--and one American fishing boat called the “Voyager,” about 800 miles out.

“I got out my video-camera to tape the conversation because the wind was calm, just before sunset,” he said.

He recorded the Americans’ comments.

“They say I am crazy,” Peyron said. He tends to agree.

“One time is enough,” he said. “I discover myself in this, but I don’t want to risk myself too much. In this sort of crossing you need luck, and I got luck.”