Ruling the waves
At 35, Hong Kong resident Chris Stanmore-Major, who has already twice circumnavigated the globe, is gearing up for the ultimate challenge in ocean racing, writes Jenni Marsh
Chris Stanmore-Major’s girlfriend is explaining how the round-the-world solo sailor broke the news of his next, most ambitious series of adventures. “We’d been living in Sai Kung for four months, just settled, when Chris burst into our room in the middle of the night, saying: ‘Abbi, we’re going sailing,’” says the yoga instructor from North Carolina, in the United States. “Suddenly, our whole lives are going back into containers.”
The couple will soon swap the 5,000 books they inherited from Stanmore-Major’s late uncle for Kindles, their onlyjust- assembled furniture is destined for storage and their new pet cats need a home.
Such is life when you cohabit with one of the world’s most ambitious and accomplished sailors. Stanmore-Major, 35, has twice circumnavigated the globe, once as the skipper of Qingdao, the Chinese entry in the 2009-10 Clipper Round the World Yacht Race, and then solo in the Velux 5 Oceans 2010-11 on Robin Knox-Johnston’s Spartan vessel. He was the 182nd person to sail solo around the world – and to put that in perspective, 2,500 people have scaled Mount Everest and 530 have been into space. And now, after more than 12 months living on dry land, he’s preparing to sail the Transat Jacques Vabre (which follows the “coffee route”, from South America to Europe), beginning in November, followed by the Barcelona World Race 2014 (“the longest and most difficult shorthanded [accompanied by a small crew] sailing race in the world”) and ultimately the Vendeé Globe 2016, the only non-stop, single-handed round-the-world race, which is regarded by many as the ultimate challenge in ocean racing.
For her part, Abbi Heilig – who used to work as a hospitality crew member on luxury pleasure yachts and met Stanmore-Major on the sailing circuit – will accompany her partner to the starting points, travel to the ports at which he stops and be on call for support.
“It’s that aim to do everything non-stop that I’m drawn by,” says Stanmore-Major, the son of a mechanic father and psychologist mother from Dorset, Britain. “I love the self-reliance, being on a 60-foot boat by myself. The true way to test that is to take one man, one boat and the open sea. If I finish [the Vendeé Globe], I’ve won.”
He claims he’d like to retire from ocean racing at 40, but that seems implausible.
Stanmore-Major wasn’t always this driven, though. In fact, there was a time when the former serviceman found guys like himself a bit ridiculous.
