ADVENTURE SPORTS
Daily Telegraph - May 2006

Last week, to a chorus of the usual cries of triumph, Dee Caffari, a particularly strapping PE teacher from the UK, successfully circumnavigated the globe the “wrong way”.

This achievement, greatly celebrated though it might have been, was based in my opinion on at least one flawed assumption -- that there is a “right way” to sail solo around the world.

There are only two circumstances I can conceive of in which sailing around the world in a small boat might be of use. First, the possibility of finding some undiscovered minor continent in the South Pacific rich in resources and ripe for the claiming. (Don't worry: I've checked Google Earth several times and there's nothing there.) Second, a future in which a zombie virus is unleashed and my neighbours start trying to eat my brains. (Should this ever happen I would like to apologise in advance to Ms Caffari and reserve my spot on her next trip.)

Dangerous follies, needless to say, are no friend of mine, even less so the people who embark upon them. If there is a “spirit” of adventure then it's safe to say I'm not exactly speaking in tongues.

Adventure might once have had its uses. These days, however, it is nothing but aimless record-breaking, a seemingly never-ending saga of solo-round-the-world-tallest-shortest-oldest-youngest-man-woman-ape-with-one-leg-no-hands-siamese-twins-on-dolphins -- all of it accompanied by rescue helicopters and solemn news commentary on icebergs, storms and near-drownings, as though the round-the-world sailor had expected to find merely verdant islands of hula-dancers or seas of jelly full of marshmallow fish.

There was a time, of course, when you actually had something to show for sailing around the world. After a year of charting oceans you arrived back in some royal court laden with new vegetables, a breeding pair of aardvarks and at least one disgruntled native in a head-dress.

These days, natives have pesky “human rights”, all the land has got somebody's flag in it and “adventure” is therapy for rich people with bi-polar disorder.

People who climb a mountain on the stumps of their severed legs or leap-frog the Sahara claim to be an inspiration to humanity, and in some ways they are right – they’re an inspiration to stay at home and read a book.

© Brendan Shanahan 2008