The Vendee Globe Challenge is a singlehanded circumnavigation, without port of call and without outside assistance. Raphael Dinelli, youngest and least experienced of the 16 yachtsmen and women to set sail in November 1996 tells the story of his horrendous capsize and dismasting in the Southern Ocean - the fear and exhaustion, the numbing cold of the Antarctic waters, and of his rescue against the odds by fellow skipper Pete Goss, later to receive the Legion d'Honneur from the President of France for his exploit, and of the firm friendship this rescue was to cement. This is also the story of a mission: to challenge the sea head-on. Dinelli describes the struggle to turn mission into reality, from his earliest years at the leading edge of the then new sport of windsurfing to his departure as an outsider in the Vendee Globe fleet.