Bold Man of the Sea: My Epic Journey (Panda) Book

On March 30, 2001, the world watched as British businessman Jim Shekhdar was twice unceremoniously dumped from his ocean-going rowboat and finally had to swim through the surf to complete his nine-month single-handed voyage across the Pacific from Peru to Australia. It was an unconventional end to an extraordinary journey--but as Bold Man of the Sea reveals, a finish entirely in keeping with the spirit of the man behind the mission. In setting out to be the first person ever to row solo, unaided across the Pacific, Shekhdar was scratching an itch that had bothered him ever since he had turned fifty and felt the full force of middle-age malaise. He completed a team row across the Atlantic in 1997, but that just served to sharpen his enthusiasm--to the extent that he was ultimately to put £75,000 of his own money into the Pacific project after a long and ultimately frustrating search for sponsors. My fourth letter was angry, and it finally provoked a response from the Virgin corporate marketing department in which they explained that rowing was not their sport. They also asked me to stop writing to them. That was all. I had hoped they might have offered me cheap air tickets, but there was nothing. Almost half of the book deals with the struggle to actually get his boat in the water--including an epic battle with Peruvian customs officials--but readers are left in no doubt that the real challenge lay ahead: nine months of solitude, which found him screaming in impotent rage at a millpond sea; fending off sharks with a home-made harpoon; dodging supertankers and hurricanes; and singing to the yellow-fin tuna. The photographs of his tiny, rather ramshackle craft underline the task he was undertaking. Not one for philosophising at length on the meaning of things--a quality which probably explains why he has done what so many only dream of doing--Shekhdar in print is inspirational nevertheless. As he says he began his journey as a creaking, overweight middle-aged man on a list for hip-replacement surgery, and strode onto the shore in Australia feeling physically and mentally renewed. This is a triumph for the vision and bloody-mindedness of a discontented family man, recommended reading for sofa-bound adventurers everywhere. --Alex HankinRead More