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What: “Godforsaken Sea, Racing the World’s Most Dangerous Waters”

Author: Derek Lundy, $22.95, Algonquin Books

There are around-the-world sailboat races, and then there is the Vendee Globe. It is the real test of something well beyond description of common words--survival skills, stubbornness, maybe insanity.

Unlike the other sailing endurance tests that come along occasionally, at huge dollar costs to sponsors and huge human costs to competitors, the Vendee Globe takes this all to the ultimate: one sailor, one boat, no stops, no assistance. Just go around the world, through the Southern Ocean above Antarctica--where the waves frequently resemble the Empire State Building, and that’s on a good day--by yourself for four months, almost never seeing land, then cruise back into the North Atlantic port from which you’d started four months earlier.

It is this event, starting in early November 1996 and ending for those of the 16 starters who actually made it all the way around in February and early March of ‘97, that amateur sailor and author Derek Lundy captures so well. What he wrote about is truly an extreme sport, and the research and attention to detail make this an extremely well-done work.

Lundy interviews most of the sailors before they leave, follows them by radio and fax all the way around and eventually is able to tell the world what was going on out there by letting the participants describe their adventures.

Lundy’s sensitivity is especially acute in his passion for describing the ebbs and flows of hope and despair over missing, and eventually lost forever, sailor Gerry Roufs, the only tragedy in a sporting event that, by its very nature, is set up for so many more.

This is a nicely done story of an extreme sport that has much more on the line than a skateboard flip or two.