Last Sunday evening at Berkeley Marina, sailors, liveaboards and pedestrians enjoying the long summer day suddenly heard tires screeching. That’s not unusual at the south end of the marina, where people often do ‘donuts’ in the Hs Lordships parking lot. But this time, the screeching was followed by a splash.

At the Cal Sailing Club, people were hanging out on the steps in front of the clubhouse when they heard an engine rev and tires squeal. "By the time I looked over, I saw a splash in the water; people were going, ‘Holy shit, was that a car?’" said a CSC instructor we spoke with this morning. He grabbed a lifejacket and jumped into a motorboat (a 15-ft Whaler) with the ‘dayleader’. Ninety seconds later, they were at the car, which witnesses said was a Dodge Hellcat Charger, a powerful automobile. (The instructor — whom we’ve decided not to identify because there are ongoing felony charges against the driver — said he wanted to add that, "Cal Adventures responded just as quickly.") 

"The guy and the girlfriend were sitting on the hood," the instructor told us. "They had busted out the windshield as the car was sinking; they were in shock and hysterical, and cut up a little bit. It took a couple of minutes to get them into the boat. The guy didn’t want to leave the car, and the girlfriend didn’t want to leave the guy."

The motorboat headed the short distance back to the CSC dock with the instructor at the wheel. "I got in an argument [with the driver] about sitting down in the boat while it was moving," the instructor said. "He got pissed and decked me. So the dayleader dealt with that. By the time we got to the dock, the cops and fire department were already there." The instructor said he told the police not to let the driver go because he had just hit him, and eventually filed assault charges, but told us he’s considering dropping them, "Because that guy had a hell of a day." 

The driver, a 19-year-old man from Berkeley, was arrested on "on suspicion of attempted murder . . . suspicion of felony domestic violence as well as felony battery for allegedly punching one of the good Samaritans who rescued him from his sinking car," KTVU reported.

Reader Nancy Schimmelman — who’s a liveaboard at Berkeley Marina — sent us photos from the following day, as the car was being towed out of the water. "I was told by some of the RV denizens who claimed to have seen the water entry that the driver helped his passenger out first."

On July 1, the Golden Globe Race will start from Les Sables d’Olonne, France, and sail nonstop and unassisted around the world. Seventeen skippers from 12 countries will take to the high seas in a race that’s purposefully low-tech and steeped in tradition.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the original Golden Globe, the modern rendition of the race will be sailed in production boats between 32 and 36 ft overall and designed prior to 1988, with a full-length keel, where the rudder is attached to the keel’s trailing edge. The sailors will "be navigating with sextant on paper charts without electronic instruments or autopilots, will hand-write their logs, determine the weather for themselves, and only occasionally will they talk to the outside world when long-range high frequency and Ham radios allow," the Golden Globe website said.  

First held in 1968, the original Golden Globe was eventually backed by the Sunday Times newspaper following its sponsorship of the historic 1966-67 circumnavigation of Sir Francis Chichester, who had sailed from the UK, stopped in Sydney, Australia, and sailed back to the UK in a record time of nine months and one day. The bar set, a nonstop solo circumnavigation was "about all there’s left to do now," said Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, who was among several sailors suddenly vying for the new record. The Sunday Times decided to sponsor a race, rather than any one individual’s record attempt. The Golden Globe led to unimaginable fame for Knox-Johnston, a limelight that entrant Bernard Moitessier would famously shun. Both men would go on to write seminal books about their experiences.

The original Golden Globe has a history both illustrious, dark, and terrible, as the tragic story of Donald Crowhurst that would become a fixture in the lore of the race — more on that in Part 2.

Where the sailors in the original Golden Globe weren’t required to have any sailing experience and could use any type of vessel, this year’s entrants are undergoing rigorous safety inspections before they’re given the green light. As of this writing, seven sailors still had to perform a variety of solo sea trials and other safety protocols before being allowed to sail on July 1 (there is a six-day grace period until July 7).

As reported in this month’s Sightings, the 17 singlehanders setting sail in two days all have considerable offshore experience, and represent a wide range of countries: France (4), Britain (3), Australia (2), and one each from Estonia, Finland, Ireland, India, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Palestine, Russia and the US. Sixty-five-year-old Hungarian-born American Istvan Kopar, aboard the Tradewind 35 Puffin, has already solo-circumnavigated in a 31-footer without the aid of GPS.

The fleet’s sole female, Susie Goodall, 28, is also its youngest skipper. Having been introduced to sailing at age three, her career thus far includes teaching sailing on dinghies, yachts and tallships, and skippering a sail training vessel. Susie is sailing aboard the Rustler 36 DHL Starlight. The fleet’s oldest competitor is legendary French singlehander Jean-Luc van den Heede, 73, sailing Matmut, also a Rustler 36. A five-time circumnavigator, van den Heede knows his way through the Southern Ocean as well as any sailor alive today. He holds the record for the fastest solo westabout circumnavigation, and has won honors in four previous solo round-the-world races beginning with the 1986 BOC Challenge.

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In an age of open-water speed machines and the constant smashing of records, it’s refreshing to see a low-tech event harken to a time when many people wondered if sailing nonstop around the world alone was even possible. We tip our hat to all the skippers, and look forward to following this event over the next year.