The biennial Around Alone yacht race is the most thrilling adventure in the world for the sailors passionate enough to undertake it. It’s a two-class solo race that starts and ends in Newark, New Jersey, with stops in England, South Africa, New Zealand, and Brazil, and it is as tough in its way as the non-stop race, the VendÔee Globe. In 2002, thirteen sailors competed, some of them professional sailors, well funded by corporate sponsors, and some of them adventurers who sacrificed almost everything to enter the race. Among the adventurers wasDerek Hatfield, a former fraud-squad Mountie, whose forty-foot Spirit of Canada had cost him almost everything he had.