OCC’s Grant Has a Real Tale to Tell

Dave Grant, Orange Coast College’s crew coach and president emeritus, has had many grand adventures.

He has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, coached rowers in the 1984 Olympics and sailed from Newport Beach to the South Pacific--8,000 miles in a 28-foot boat. And with the wit of a master storyteller, the 62-year-old former history professor can bring alive each moment with vivid details.

But these days Grant is most enthusiastic about retelling an adventure he has only read about: a failed Antarctic expedition and amazing struggle for survival by 28 men from 1914 to 1916.

The expedition leader was Ernest Shackleton, a British explorer who hoped to make the first crossing of the Antarctic continent. But the men never reached land; their boat, Endurance, sank after being seized by pack ice and crushed. That left them stranded thousands of miles from civilization, with no hope of rescue.

“Nobody knows where they are,” Grant said. “Nobody cares. It’s right in the middle of World War I. Nobody’s going to help them; there’s nobody in that part of the world. There’s no radio, they were just toys back then.

“It’s staggering.”

More so because they survived.

The story, little known for years, is enjoying a surge of attention, no doubt helped by the trend in harrowing true adventure tales such as “Into Thin Air” and “The Perfect Storm.” There are several popular books on the subject and an IMAX movie will be released this winter.

Grant will present a two-part seminar on the saga at OCC’s sailing base next Friday and Jan. 26. His presentation will be interspersed with actual film footage of Endurance obtained from the American Museum of Natural History.

Grant’s interest in the Endurance story was piqued in 1989 when he took a trip on a Russian icebreaker to South Georgia Island, 1,500 miles east of the tip of South America. Shackleton’s expedition left South Georgia in December, 1914, and Shackleton returned there about 500 days later in May 1916, reaching the safety of a whaling station only after making the first crossing of the mountainous island. Months later, Shackleton rescued the remainder of his men, whom he left living in a cave on another desolate island.

Grant visited some of the South Georgia sites and was captivated.

It’s a story of amazing deprivation and cold, of men dragging heavy lifeboats over hundreds of miles of shifting ice, of Shackleton leaving most of his crew and sailing 750 miles in one of the lifeboats to South Georgia Island, only to nearly be smashed against the shore by giant waves.

“For people who have never seen it,” Grant said, “it’s unimaginable to see these huge waves, 30 and 40 feet, one after another crashing on the shore and thinking, they were thinking as one of them said in the log, ‘What a pity of it all to be lost here and no one will know how close we came.’

“And of course they did live through it, but it was close and the whole thing would have ended right there.”

In four hours spread over two nights, Grant will present many such dramatic moments, weaving in, when appropriate, his own experiences. Listening to him, it’s not surprising he sometimes wishes he had first-hand knowledge of the events.

“It’s probably not possible to have that kind of adventure anymore,” Grant said. “And I look at it with admiration to a certain degree and to a very high degree with a certain amount of envy.

“What an extraordinary chance to be with other people who are so committed, who are so competent and so confident that they are going to make it.”

The fee for the seminar is $11 and reservations are recommended. Call (949) 645-9412 for details.

BIG CAT UPDATE

PlayStation, the 125-foot maxi-catamaran designed in Orange County, continued to make up ground on the leaders in the around-the-world Race of the Millennium this week. But Thursday it entered the Doldrums, the low-wind area in the equatorial Atlantic.

“We cannot get south on this breeze,” said crewman Dave Scully on the PlayStation Web site.

Early Thursday evening (Greenwich Mean Time), PlayStation was in fourth place, 700 miles behind the two boats battling for the lead, Club Med and Team Adventure. PlayStation fell behind early in the race that started New Year’s Eve in Barcelona, Spain, when it was forced into port by a torn mainsail. Because of the assisted stop, it was assessed a 48-hour penalty.