Animals in Sea History
by Richard J. King he French sailor Bernard Moitessier is perhaps best known for sailing alone a full one-anda-half times around the world, nonstop, in the Golden Globe Race of 1968–69. He later published The Long Way, a book about his experience. It is one of the finest sea stories ever composed, a masterpiece in nature writing in which he describes a spellbinding experience with dolphins. Aboard his boat Joshua (named after the first solo circumnavigator Joshua Slocum), Moitessier was sailing a route that had taken him from England around the Cape of Good Hope, across the Indian Ocean, south of Australia, and was about to enter the South Pacific just below Aotearoa
42
New Zealand. Among the books that he read underway was Robert Merle’s The Day of the Dolphin (1967), a science fiction novel about marine mammal intelligence and a biologist, based on the real-life figure of John Lily, a researcher who studied water immersion, hallucinogens, and dolphinhuman communication. As Moitessier and Joshua were nearing Rakiura (Stewart Island), he knew that submerged rocky shoals, called “South Trap,” extended far out beyond the island. Though it was mostly overcast, he managed a sun sight with his sextant and was able to fix his position with some confidence. He continued sailing along with a steady favorable breeze, making sure to give the shoals a
wide berth. Once he got past the shoals, he would be eastbound in the Pacific, free from worrying about any more land for thousands of miles.