Around Alone

More people have gone into space than have sailed around the world alone. It is one of the most arduous tests of mental and physical stamina imaginable and the most prolonged endurance trial of any sport. When Emma Richards found that she was the youngest contender—and the only woman—in the 2002 Around Alone race, she wondered what she had gotten herself into. Yet for Richards, the physical ordeals paled against the “soul-destroying solitude” of months alone aboard a yacht. And when, in the dead of night, her radio warned of marauding pirates, her profound loneliness turned to abject terror. Around Alone not only recounts a remarkable sporting triumph, it also reveals the human side of one of sailing’s brightest new stars.