Aboard Survivor With HIV-Positive Sailors

Carried by the wind and protected by angels, the HIV-positive crew of the Survivor defied the virus, their own fears and a hurricane to complete the Transpacific Yacht Race in July 1997.

“If life is a game, this is the biggest playing field there is,” team organizer Robert Hudson says as the 10-man crew heads into the unforgiving Pacific for a 10-day, 2,200-mile voyage from Long Beach to Honolulu. As documented in “Rock the Boat,” debuting Sunday on HBO after a brief theatrical run, their trip is a testament to human potential.

Competing against faster yachts with better-seasoned crews, the Survivor’s sailors are already sleep-deprived and nerve-frayed when they learn that Hurricane Dolores is roaring toward them. Soon, they are enduring squall after punishing squall--those brewed by Mother Nature as well as those that erupt among themselves as they are pushed to their physical and psychological limits. In a 1 1/2-hour program packed with shipboard footage, filmmaker Bobby Houston is unafraid to reveal the crew with its flaws showing and its pants (literally) down.

Are the sailors helped along by the “angels”--friends, lovers and others felled by AIDS--whose names are painted on the hull? It’s nice to think so. Then again, that’s surely not all that makes them one of just 32 of the original 39 teams to reach the finish line.

“I look around at these guys,” organizer Hudson says late in the race, “and I know that each one of them was told he was going to die. And I look at them today, and I see veterans, like any other war. They’re gonna make it.”

* “Rock the Boat” debuts Sunday at 7:30 p.m. on HBO, repeating Friday at 10:45 p.m. and other times. The network has rated it TV-14 (may be inappropriate for viewers younger than 14).