SLIPPING INTO SALVADOR
22nd March 2003

Tim Kent slipped into Salvador under cover of darkness, his boat ghosting on a smooth sea lit by the reflection of a thousand lights. He looked tired, and a little frustrated after having spent the day making slow and painful progress towards the finish. At breakfast he was 60 miles from the finish and looking at an early afternoon arrival, but the wind gods had other ideas. They shut off the breeze and Everest Horizontal bobbed around going nowhere slowly. "It was really frustrating," Tim said. "We were so close and there was not a breath of air. Only a small slop that shook the wind out of the sails." Finally a light wind picked up and the American skipper was at last able to put Leg 4 behind him. His official finish time was 00:03:58 local time (03:03:58 GMT).

It had been a momentous leg for Tim. A relative rookie to solo offshore racing, although no one would call him that now, Kent’s second foray into the Southern Ocean took him into the deep south and around Cape Horn, a landmark and personal milestone that has been a lifelong dream. "Cape Horn was incredible," Tim said. "It was everything I thought it was going to be. We summited Everest." His approach to Cape Horn was typical of the area and after a wild night of squally weather packing winds over 40 knots, Cape Horn appeared out of the sunlight between squalls as if scripted. Tim gybed a couple of times and passed within six miles of the famous rock. "These are hallowed waters," he wrote in an email to his website. "Countless wrecks lie on the bottom here, and countless lives have been lost trying to get around this windswept point of land. I feel honored to be here, to see this storied point and move on. I am incredibly lucky to be on a boat this safe, in weather this good, on an adventure this grand."

Those who have followed Tim’s story from the beginning when the odds of his participation were about the same as his odds of an oxygen free ascent of the real Everest, will know that Tim is indeed on a grand adventure. The road from Great Lakes racer to Cape Horn veteran has not been easy, but the optimism and unwavering sense of humor is what sets Tim apart from the rest of us. As he once told me privately. "I am a stubborn bastard. I don’t let that side of me show very often, but when I want something badly enough I will not stop until I have it."

He now has four Around Alone legs behind him. A single relatively short hop up the coast of Brazil, through the Caribbean, past the eastern seaboard of the US to Newport is all that stands between Tim and his dream of a solo circumnavigation. Like fellow American Bruce Schwab who finished two days ago, and indeed like all the skippers in this race, what set Tim and the others apart from the rest of us is their courage to act on their dreams. Welcome to Salvador Tim.

--- Brian Hancock great.circle@verizon.net

Source: Around Alone Official Site