Derek Hatfield on board his yacht, Spirit of Canada.
Snoozing on the deck of a yacht might sound like a dream vacation to some, but for Derek Hatfield, it had all the makings of a nightmare.
Hatfield, 58, sits third as Canada's entry in the single-handed, around-the-world race known as the Velux 5 Oceans. Through the first leg of the race - 32 days from La Rochelle, France, to Cape Town, South Africa - Hatfield could only catnap briefly from time to time in a sleeping chair on deck when his autopilot equipment failed to work.
"In the first leg, I couldn't sleep," the former RCMP officer from Mahone Bay, N.S., said from Cape Town. "We told the autopilot brain to steer by the 'true wind' but it didn't do that. So, I stayed and slept on deck the whole time in case anything went wrong."
Rations ran low. Hatfield ran out of the snacks skippers pop when, as a single sailor, he couldn't abandon the steering. He ran out of comfort foods - they're not a frill when you're spending months alone at sea - and fresh water for drinking.
Still, he finished third among five entries on the 7,932 nautical-mile Atlantic Ocean leg, down the coast of Africa, and earned $16,000 in sponsor payouts for that. American Brad Van Liew and Poland's Zbigniew Gutkowski are ahead of him. Chris Stanmore-Major of Britain and Christophe Bullens of Belgium are fourth and fifth, respectively.
Hatfield leaves Dec. 12 on the next leg for Wellington. Subsequent legs take the fleet around Cape Horn to Salvador, Brazil; up the United States coast to Charleston, S.C.; then across the Atlantic to complete the circle at La Rochelle in May of 2011.
Hatfield is on his third world circumnavigation. He's almost six days astern of Van Liew, a previous Around Alone champion who won the 50-foot class in 2002-03. It took him only 28 days to complete the first leg and he called his boat, Le Pingouin, "demanding."
Gutkowski, 36, who caught Van Liew early in the first leg before falling off the pace, has the oldest boat in the field, the 19-year-old Operon Racing vessel. Stanmore-Major, from the Isle of Wight, lurks as a seasoned sailor. He won the 1998-99 Around the World race.
The upcoming Southern Ocean voyage is reputed to be the most trying leg of the nine-month trek, with huge 30-foot swells, small but dangerous icebergs and stiff winds off Antarctica. But it will have to pose a major trial to put the first month of the journey out of Hatfield's mind.
"I really had to work hard to get the boat ready, and after starting, I crashed pretty hard. I suffered for the first week. I'm expecting to do better the next leg," said Hatfield, who specialized in fraud investigations as a cop. "I've done some stuff in Cape Town to make the boat faster - starting with fixing the autopilot.
"I also introduced a reaching sail for the Southern Ocean, where there are higher winds. There are low pressure systems around Antarctica that come into play with the wind, and the waves - monster waves - that are in the Southern Ocean. We'll all be going fast. Some call it the most treacherous leg. It's certainly much faster than the leg coming down here."
Sailing around the world alone has the built-in hardship of loneliness. Hatfield got together with his wife, Pattianne Verburgh, in South Africa, but looks ahead to long stretches on his own on the ocean.
The solitary sailor doesn't feel completely lonesome, without a partner for conversation, as once was the case, he said.
Hatfield, who won Canada's Rolex Sailor of the Year award in 2003, will be away from his family's touch during the holidays but not completely out of touch.
"You're isolated … but not really alone," he said. "The satellite communications are good. I can pick up the satellite phone and talk to my wife and kids when I need to and I have access to the Internet."
That still doesn't make it easy to deal with the waves, read the wind and cope with the lack of human help. It's easy to get engrossed in the minutiae.
One of Hatfield's communications near the end of the first leg was: "all the clean socks and underwear are gone and I'm starting to recycle the dirty ones; all the allotted chocolate pudding cups are gone; I'm down to 15 litres of fresh water (water maker not working); there are 3 fresh oranges left but they are a bit like sun dried fruit inside; my mustache has almost grown back in; I've lost my … sunshade hat over the side."
Over the past 28 years, promoters say, only 73 sailors have finished the Velux 5 Oceans test. The name sponsor specializes in energy efficiency, indoor climate and renewable energy, manufacturing skylights and solutions for flat roofs.
The boats rely on wind, electricity and solar energy for fuel.
Hatfield's Spirit of Canada boat is an Eco 60 class, which bears the signatures of 7,000 supporters. It is sponsored by Active House, a sponsor that only came on board at the end of the summer.