How fast man Dag Pike likes to slow down

Dag Pike, record-breaker and high-speed navigator, is a sailing man at heart

Perhaps it's easy to understand why. Imagine yourself thousands of miles from land, going so fast you're almost airborne. You might be at sea, but the sea is at you too, coming at you as water like concrete and spray like bullets. Not much wind on your face if you want to survive, you're all enclosed in a protective cell, closer to an astronaut dodging meteorites than a sailor catching a breeze.

There's another difference, right there. No engines, no computers, no knobs and dials. The Falmouth boats are simple, the spirit of real seamanship with only the sails to set and a few ropes to pull. But serious boats none the less, heavily built for serious work. Slow speed dredging in winter is not an activity to take lightly. Not that Dag ever allows himself to hang about. Competition is in his blood as much as seawater. So the Motor-Pike's passion is not just sailing a Falmouth work boat, it's racing one. And none of your modern GRP replicas either, his is a 30-foot 107-year old beauty. The real thing.

Softwing, a Truro River oyster dredger of the same age as Dag's. Thanks to www.cornishmaritimetrust.org.uk

Of course there is a time when competition stops. But Dag still yearns for the sea and adventure. So his other passion is getting away, cruising where few people go and just being there is at the limits of civilisation. Call it extreme cruising, as long as it's at the edge of nowhere, Dag is happy.

Take Stewart Island, at 47 degrees latitude and south of New Zealand, the last habitable land before you get to the South Pole. Because of the constant gales and rough seas, few power boats venture here. It's a land of sailing ships and whaling, now long gone but reminding us of a better if more dangerous world back in the Nineteenth Century.

In true Dag Pike style this was not an ordinary cruise. The boat was a brute-force 72 foot awesome catamaran capable of 30 knots. And though it began in fair weather it soon ran into a fierce squall from the southwest, barrelling in at 35 knots with all the force of the Southern Ocean behind it, unchecked for thousands of miles round and round the world. No problem, this is the man who rough weather tested inflatable boats for the RNLI - in fact the deep vee-hull of today's high-speed RIB was devised by him, a counter to the constant wear of beaching and launching in heavy weather.

Maybe it was a rehearsal. Not only does Dag want to beat ALL the records for crossing the Atlantic, the big ambition is to use the same boat to set a record for the fastest run ROUND THE WORLD. If that makes you breathless then perhaps you should take life the same way he does - with a slow and steady other life to contrast the fast-paced heat.

Fascinating and full of astounding stories, Dag's autobiography is due to be published this summer, in fitting celebration of his most famous record, the 82 hour dash by Atlantic Challenger II from the Ambrose light off New York to Bishop Rock light off the Scillies, only a short hop from - you guessed it, Falmouth.