Word: soldini
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Dates: during 1999-1999
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...more than 20 hours, Giovanni Soldini had pushed due south, his face stung by frigid squalls and his 60-ft. sailboat pummeled by the ferocious waves of the southern Pacific, 1,900 miles west of the tip of South America. "I'm soaked and frozen," the 32-year-old Italian wrote in a Feb. 16 e-mail to his Milan-based racing team. Desperately trying to interpret computerized weather charts, he was also troubled. He was still 18 miles from the spot where a satellite tracking system said Isabelle Autissier, 42, his French rival in the Around Alone solo global...
...Soldini's good fortune--and Autissier's--held. Two and a half hours later, Soldini peered through the predawn gloom and spied the white upturned hull of Autissier's boat, the PRB, being pounded by waves the size of a four-story building. Twice he steered as close as he dared, but, he says, "I couldn't see her anywhere." Calling out her name and getting no answer, he feared the worst. On his third pass, he hurled a hammer at the hull. It landed with a sharp crack. Moments later, an escape hatch in the stern opened...
Realizing the boat was lost, she activated a radio beacon that relayed her position from a satellite to Charleston. That far from land or shipping lanes, her only hope was that one of her competitors might save her. Told he was in the best position to reach her, Soldini, who lost a close friend in a race just last year, changed course immediately...
...veteran of near disasters, Autissier claims she's never felt in serious danger. In fact, she was sleeping soundly when Soldini's hammer caromed off the hull of her boat. Still, she is well aware that lethal dangers are never far off. In these same southern Pacific waters in 1997, she broke off from another round-the-world race to search for a French-Canadian yachtsman who had been swamped by rough seas. He was never found. "We race boats, but we're not out to flirt with death," says Autissier. "If one of us doesn't come back...
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