I bought this DVD recently and sat and watched it last Sunday evening. The OSTAR is the Original Singlehanded Trans-Atlantic Race. It runs every four years from Pymouth to Newport, Rhode Island.
The documentary mainly focusses on the preparations and musings of about a dozen of the competitors prior to the race. What was really interesting was the variation of their backgrounds and motivation. One of them was a pub land lord who wanted to get away from it all and another had never raced before and felt "If you only climb one mountain in your life... may as well make it Everest". There were several youngish aspiring pro sailors, several older, more weathered solo sailors.
There wasn't a huge amount of during the race footage of conditions, sail changes, problems, etc. There were a few interesting encounters like fishing boats and grumpy cargo ship captains. I also would have liked more information about the wind strength and general conditions during the race. When I was following it in 2009 via various blogs, I really got a sense of how tough it was, but this didn't really come across in the DVD, so again more time exploring the struggle would have been good.
Overall I really (,really) enjoyed this DVD, but would have liked it to be a bit longer rather than a brief 45 minutes. The production values were excellent considering the semi-professional basis on which it was made. You could argue that £15 is a lot for a short documentary, but considering the niche appeal and therefore limited distribution - I think this is really pretty good value.
No comments:
Post a Comment