Risking It All

(7 of 10)

Ah, but the craziness has a fine ring to it while it lasts. One of the most appealing adventure stories of recent years is what might be called the Every Now and Then Transatlantic Singlehanded Ridiculously Small Boat Derby. The first entrant was the late Robert Manry, a Cleveland newspaperman who in 1965 sailed across the Atlantic in his 13½-ft. Tinkerbelle, a craft so tiny that it looked like a bathtub toy. Years passed—it takes a certain sort of person to enter the Ridiculous—and last year Briton Tom McClean sailed from Newfoundland to England in an absurd craft called the Giltspur, more than 3 ft. shorter than Tinkerbelle.

McClean, now 41, a former Special Air Service warrior who runs a survival camp on an island near the Hebrides, had already rowed singlehanded across the Atlantic west to east in 1969, and his record of 70.7 days still stands. But his Ridiculously Small Boat celebrity vanished in only two weeks, when Bill Dunlop, 42, a former truck driver from Mechanic Falls, Me., bobbed into the harbor at Falmouth, England, in Wind's Will, a teapot just over 9 ft. long that he had sailed from Portland. The two became friends, but McClean was not having second best; he told Dunlop that he would chain-saw several inches from Giltspur and sail the Atlantic again.

As he was preparing to do so, another American, an unemployed computer technician named Wayne Dickinson, washed up on the rocks of Ireland in God's Tear, 142 days after setting sail from Point Allerton, Mass. God's Tear, indeed; Dickinson's boat was about 2 in. shorter than Dunlop's. McClean now had two American tiny-tub artists to beat, and earlier this month he succeeded, despite a broken mast in the Bay of Biscay, reaching Portugal in the bobtailed Giltspur, now a mere 7 ft. 9 in. overall. "The more people say a thing can't be done," said he, "the more I think I can do it."

Giltspur could diminish even further; its owner is only 5 ft. 6 in. tall, and he still has his chain saw. But Dickinson is not rushing to challenge the record. Dunlop, meanwhile, could not be bothered about such trifles. Three weeks ago, he left Portland, Me., to sail Wind's Will around the world. He said he would be back some time in 1986, although he would not say just when. "I might be a day or two late," said Dunlop. "I don't want anyone down on the dock waiting for me."