Bullimore bullish about the Horn

Not many people would choose to spend their 58th birthday alone, probably cold and wet, in a beast of a racing yacht approaching the notorious Cape Horn, where the southern ocean is squeezed between the tip of South America and Antarctica.

But Tony Bullimore, on the 15th of January next year, plans to do just that at the two-thirds point in what truly deserves the title the world's toughest yachting event, the Vendee Globe Singlehanded Non-Stop Round the World Race.

Everything about Bullimore is unlikely, from early years that saw him on a fortune-hunting trek though Africa, to the establishment of a business in Birmingham trading everything from car polish to pharmaceuticals and field hospitals, to even his racing of sailboats.

A short, pugnacious, barrel-chested man with crinkly but greying hair, Bullimore has a conversational style that makes Ronnie Corbett's train of thought seem like something on the most disciplined of tracks. No answer is ever completed without several runs around a variety of tangential subjects, each embellished with detailed descriptions. Asked why he is undertaking a 110-day confrontation with the elements, he first takes a long time running through reasons which should be discounted.

First, it is not the glamour. After all, he has done enough, been up the Congo and met with Mobutu's warriors, all of which came out of a train journey from the Cape with a missionary. Let me tell you about the missionary...

Hold on, why then? Well, there is a breed that likes to go as close to death as possible and still be able to walk away from it. But he is not one of them, not a madman. No, he has experience of more than a quarter of a million miles at sea and when he is on a boat he is not only very careful, he is also much tidier than you would think looking around his office. In fact, he is methodical and clinical on the boat - the only place he is.

Bullimore falls back on the thought that he has always been looking for the next adventure, the next challenge. A month ago he was in the Far East every week, Taipei, China, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, buying and selling, international trading, moving products around the world. He is an entrepreneur, but not an Arthur Daley. Nor is he a Kashoggi or Threadneedle Street either, but he has done business with the presidents of various countries.

Eventually Bullimore agrees that the Vendee Globe is a race he wants to win and that he has always had a yearning to race around the world; 27 crossings of the Atlantic have not been enough. "I first wanted to do it 38 years ago and went to look at a twin-diesel, 22-foot Atalanta in Burnham, but was told I should instead save up and buy a good, big yacht as I wouldn't make it to the Isle of Sheppey."

Instead, he looked at crossing the Sahara, but the French authorities would not sanction his chosen Ford Squire, because it did not have the regulation ground clearance. Which is why he sailed to Durban, walked up Table Mountain and started travelling across Africa on a train with that missionary.

So, on 3 November, Bullimore will leave Les Sables d'Olonne, Brittany, in a 60-foot, snub-masted ketch designed by Martyn Smith and Barry Noble and built for the 1993 Round Europe Race. He estimates it cost him nearly pounds 500,000 to put the boat, Global Challenger, together and it was only on Tuesday that he knew he would have any sizeable sponsorship to help him with the 1996 Vendee.

Both Apricot, which backed the Nigel Irens-designed trimaran which made his name on the Atlantic run, and United Overseas Group, have put a little in the pot for old times' sake. But he now has Exide on board, literally in the form of many different types of battery, and graphically in big letters down the side and the coach roof of the yacht.

It has come not just as a great relief, but the key to buying some new sails, essential to maximise the boat's performance. The paradox of being able to finance such an expensive piece of kit but needing support for what may be the last major campaign he undertakes is everywhere.

Bullimore claims to have always been fit, but has not developed a special build-up for the Vendee. He would like to give up smoking, but does not think that being alone at sea for 110 days is the time to do it. His wife of 33 years, Lalel, has always supported his adventures, but she has strong reservations about this one.

He has ended up in a life-raft in the mid-Atlantic before, in the 1976 singlehanded race which claimed the life of Mike McMullen, and knows that Harry Mitchell was lost without trace during the last BOC singlehanded race in the area in which he will be celebrating his birthday.

His main support is that he feels good about his boat and that "long- distance, singlehanded racing is very much controlled by the mind. If things start going wrong it is positive thinking that is most important."

Bullimore is also determined to grab this chance with both hands. "I have had a very hard time putting the boat together for this race with hardly any sponsorship," he says. "But this is a matter of total dedication. I have the boat, the equipment, the charts. I am just a spit away from doing it and there are many people who would like to do something like this but are nowhere near it.

"I may never, in the time I have got left, ever have the chance to do it again. Of the few things left on this earth that I want to do, the Vendee Globe represents the major race, the major challenge. So, I will do it."