He Lives to Tell About High-Sea Adventure

Guy Bernardin thought it was all over last March 3 when his 60-foot sailboat fell into a deep trough from the crest of one of the biggest waves he had ever seen.

He was inside the cabin, sailing alone on auto-helm, 250 miles off Cape Horn, midway through an attempt to break the New York-to-San Francisco sailing record of 89 days 8 hours set by the clipper ship Flying Cloud in 1851. Bernardin was 6 days ahead of the record pace, but the attempt ended there.

When the boat slammed into the bottom of the trough, its mast snapped and drove a hole through the hull. Bernardin’s head slammed into a bulkhead but, bleeding, he was able to take to a small life raft and watch his boat sink. He activated his Argos transmitter to send a distress signal but held little hope that it would be heard--or, if it was, that he would be found.

The wind was blowing 45 knots, building waves that tossed the raft up, down and around like a leaf. His fingertips were freezing.

“I never saw waves so gigantic,” Bernardin said later. “I had the impression I was falling off a precipice. I had only 3 days’ supply of food. I didn’t think anyone could have located me on such a small boat.”

Somehow, though, a Chilean naval vessel did, after only 18 hours adrift, so Bernardin, 45, has lived to sail another day. And guess where he’s headed again.

With a new boat designed by New Zealand’s Bruce Farr, Bernardin sailed out of New York Harbor Thursday as one of five entrants who will be departing through January, trying for the record. Somehow, he was able to persuade the same sponsor to back him again.

“They thought the first attempt was doing fairly well,” Bernardin said. “They realized it was just a stupid accident. I was not taking any stupid risks.”

But this time he assesses his chances more realistically.

“It was the third time I’d passed Cape Horn, and each time I had that kind of weather, so I guess it will be the same unless I’m really lucky this time,” he said.

And his first two trips around Cape Horn were from west to east, with the wind and the current. East to west is the killer.

“I will have to fight hostile, natural elements, loneliness and, ultimately, for my life,” he said.

Bernardin is no dilettante mariner. Born in France and naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1986, his great-great grandfather made several passages around Cape Horn, and his grandfather captained tall ships in the early part of this century. Bernardin has sailed 70,000 miles single-handed.

There is one other monohull, sailed by Warren Luhrs, that left Nov. 23 and was reported on a record pace. Three trimarans are scheduled to leave later, two sailed by Frenchmen and the other, Great American, sailed by Georgs Kolesnikovs, until recently of Newport Beach.

A funny thing happened to Randy Smyth on his way to sweeping the Salem ProSail 40 series by winning the third event at Miami last weekend.

The fleet was making a downwind start in 15-knot winds, and Smyth turned his 40-foot catamaran sharply across the line at the gun, just missing the committee boat.

“As we ducked the committee boat, the spinnaker popped (open) and we accelerated from 15 or 16 to 22 knots, I heard this engine noise and wondered, ‘Where’s that coming from?’ ” Smyth said after returning home to Huntington Beach this week. “Then, ‘Oh, no!’ ”

Smyth had overtaken a little inflatable dinghy so fast that it had become trapped between the hulls of Smyth’s catamaran and was unable to escape.

“There was no way we could slow down to let him out,” Smyth said. “One of the guys in it got so scared, he stood up and grabbed the wire that holds our spinnaker up and was dangling there over his boat. Finally, he let go and they were able to get out, ever so slowly. That was the funniest thing I’d ever seen in my life.”

Apparently, ESPN caught the incident on tape for its highlight show to be televised Monday, noon to 1 p.m. The cameras also recorded a spectacular dismasting by rival Andrew Nyhart.

Nyhart was leading the event with 2 firsts, a third and a fourth after Saturday’s 4 races, but broke his mast in Sunday’s windier sixth race. When the mast snapped, one crewman was tossed overboard and another flipped 6 feet in the air.

Smyth’s series was 1-3-2-4-3-1-2. He collected $20,000 for winning each of the 3 events at Newport, R.I., San Francisco and Miami, plus $25,000 for winning the series.

Tom Blackaller, a longtime America’s Cup campaigner who started sailing catamarans this year, placed third in the 8-boat fleet by winning 2 of Sunday’s 3 races.

Organizers plan to run 6 events next year and have scheduled either Long Beach or San Diego as a site Sept. 2-3.

Bill Trenkle was at Miami watching the event for Sail America and indicated that the America’s Cup syndicate may enter its two Formula 40 catamarans in the ’89 series.

Dennis Conner used the boats to practice for last summer’s defense before his 59-footers were delivered. He probably wouldn’t sail in the series, staying ashore in a team management role.