Book Review - The Race by Tim Zimmerman

Presented in paperback format 316 pages, reproductions of black and white photos in centre of book. Initial print run 1st January 2004

This account of "The Race" an event that was the brainchild of Bruno Peyron pitted a group of Ocean Racing Catamarans against each other in a non stop round the world race which started in Barcelona and finished in Marsielles. At the time it was a very ambitious event and little was understood about what was required in terms of strength for a world girdling ocean racing multihull.

Tim Zimmerman writes in an engaging style and the book is a real page turner. Not only did the crews face challenges in terms of their new minted boats and equipment but also new problems stemming from the speed of the boats and their violent motion. Another obstacle confronting the skippers and teams was how to blend together crews often from very different cultures and often with different first languages into a homogenous and well oiled machine.

It's the sort of book you could hand to the wife for her to read and have a good chance of her liking it. If you have taken an interest in Ocean racing singlehanded and crewed some of the historic material will feel like a rehash but he does attempt to contextualise it during the book so it's ok. A small pet peeve is that the descriptive text of one of the photos reveals the winner half way through the book. I allready knew but it would spoil the buildup of the text if you did not know the result. I suggest you dont look at the photos until you finish the book if you have not read previous accounts of The Race.

So overall an engaging book of an interesting time in multihull ocean racing development I think anyone who is interested in ocean racing or trying to understand why anyone would be interested in ocean racing will find this book a worthwhile read. How different the newest crop of fast ocean racers seem with so many years of development under their belt but these boats helped provide the empirical knowledge that allowed custom designs, scantlings and specialised ocean racing multihull procedures to develop leading in no small part to the designs we have today.

This link has a small extract from the book:

http://www.booktopia.com.au/the-race/prod9780618382705.html#lookInside