Portsmouth - Cape Town - Auckland - Punta del Este - Portsmouth
Winner: L'Esprit d'Equipe
A dramatic change to position reporting procedures created a whole new atmosphere in the fourth event as skippers’ cheeky abuse of the old haphazard system became a thing of the past and the brave new world of satellite tracking took over, each one of the 15 entries fitted with special beacons.
All clever stuff, which more than any other innovation, illustrated the way the race was evolving. More technology, more sophistication, more professionalism, more sponsors, bigger budgets and higher safety standards.
For the rhumb-heads, there was plenty to lather over as the positions were updated every few hours but for most, the 1985 race once again boiled down to personalities. If the third race had been about Connie and Blakey, the fourth was a more convoluted affair since the seven big maxi yachts, who crossed the finish lines first in a flurry were outclassed on handicap by one of the smallest but best prepared yachts in the fleet, the former 33 Export from the 1981 race, now renamed L’Esprit d’Equipe and skippered by young ambitious Frenchman Lional Pean, who’s career had been inspired by the great Eric Tabarly.
Blakey was back for his fourth attempt on the title with a new 24 metre heavyweight called Lion New Zealand, sponsored by the Kiwi brewery of the same name. It was immediately tipped as the boat to beat, not just because Blake was more experienced in round-the-world racing than anyone else, but because his boat was ‘state-of- the-art’ with a computer assisted ‘navigatorium’ and luxury of all luxuries, a climate control device down below to offset extremes of temperature. They also had a microwave oven in the galley, though since Blake had bought into the expensive and experimental freeze-dried regime, many wondered how such highfalutin’ gear would be deployed.
Food was still a priority on some boats. On Norsk Data GB, the former GBII which had competed twice before, skipper Bob Salmon had recruited a young cook called Tracy Edwards, one of only five women in a race featuring 250 men. Her job? To feed 15 crew, three meals a day for six weeks. It proved a short-lived arrangement. Her meals were lauded, but she tired of the lack of leadership and teamwork so in Cape Town jumped ship to Atlantic Privateer where she experimented with freeze-dried food and almost caused a mutiny.
Swiss skipper Pierre Fehlmann had become a familiar face by 1985, having competed in 1977 and 1981. With a background in engineering and computer sales, his expertise was in raising cash, tapping into big corporate budgets to fund brand new builds, in this case the 24 metre rocket-ship UBS Switzerland.
These ‘rock star’ skippers were joined by the real thing in the form of Simon Le Bon, the lead singer of British pop band Duran Duran had formed a syndicate to buy Drum, a maxi that had been commissioned for one of Britain’s best known sailors, Rob James, who had tragically drowned the previous year.
Drum arrived a few days before the start in Portsmouth after her keel had fallen off during the Fastnet race six weeks earlier, leaving the crew trapped below the upturned hull. Such a terrifying experience had put some of them off, but against the odds, skipper Skip Novak still managed to get boat and crew to the Solent start, only to encounter a serious delamination problem on the sprint down to Cape Town.
Light winds all the way to the Doldrums were followed straight after by the mother of all gales which turned the Portsmouth to Cape Town leg from a donkey trot into a full scale demolition derby.
There was widespread damage with a series of dismastings and delamination problems, forcing the race committee in Cape Town to put the South African Navy on standby for emergencies.
Fortunately, they were not required, but as soon as UBS Switzerland and Lion crossed the finish line, 16 hours apart after 34 days of racing, the boatyards went into action in a bid to have the full fleet raring to go again at the start of December.
The full fleet was fit and raring to go, Eric Tabarly having agreed to concede one day per leg as a penalty for replacing his keel on Cote d’Or and Skip Novak carrying another ton of weight on Drum as a result of repairs to the hull and rudder.
There were more light airs on the run into the Southern Ocean and much to the crew’s disappointment, not much wind when they got there. After passing Prince Edwards Island, a crewmember on Lion wrote in the ships log, “And we had our own, our very own , private bloody calm yesterday.”
They cheered up when the first iceberg was spotted though the onset of thick fog made life tricky and some individuals wondered what in God’s name they were doing with their lives.
“Everything I wear is wet,” wrote Simon Gundry on Lion. “But why complain. Everybody else has the same problem. Leaving my climb up the steps till the last possible second before 4am and the start of my watch. Why do overtime on a shitty night like this, I thought.”
On Cote d’Or, the hairdryer came out, but went nowhere near anyone’s head. It was used instead to dry out the telex and weather fax while on Lion, there were other more pressing problems, all to do with heads. “Due to renovation of the yellow head, and the red head becoming the dead head, a reallocation of services and schedules is now taking place. One and a half sittings per day (or three every two days) booking required to take no longer than 7 ½ minutes per sitting. Pees – three at three minutes, no booking required.”
A broach on Cote d’Or left Michel Mouseu over the side, grasping the outside of the lifelines, his grip only loosening once he had hauled himself back over the pushpit and into the cockpit.
Come Christmas Day, the crews were ready to let their hair down. A Lobster Bisque with Royal Couscous Harissa followed by a chocolate log, was served up on Cote d’Or and some crewmembers on Lion hung stockings out on the bulkheads. They remained empty though a gift from the weather gods, in the form of some good breezes, propelled them forwards in the fleet to put a festive smile on their faces.
As the fleet rounded Cape Reinga on the run into Auckland, NZI Enterprise and Atlantic Privateer were in front with UBS Switzerland and Lion not far behind, though soon after, Lion collided with a whale, and was slowed by damage to the rudder. News that a Kiwi boat could finish the leg first had all of Auckland out on the water to welcome her back and witness a thrilling finale.
Atlantic Privateer chose to hug the shore while NZI stayed further out which gave the American boat a three nm advantage. Digby Taylor pulled out all the stops to move within half a nm of the leader, but it was Padda Kuttel and his crew on Atlantic Privateer who slid across the line first, followed two minutes later by the Kiwis. All fifteen yachts completed the leg which was a race record, but it was Phillips Innovator, the Dutch crew, who posted their first win on handicap, followed closely by leg one winners L’Esprit d’Equipe.
Anyone who was in Auckland on 15 February 1986 will still remember the restart as being one of the highlights in New Zealand’s rich yachting tradition. More than 6,000 boats churned through the waters to send the fleet on their way and 300,000 spectators joined in the fun shoreside.
Three days later, the mast on NZI came crashing down, putting a dampener on that celebration and an end to Digby Taylor’s campaign. The problems of getting a replacement mast from England proved insurmountable and the 16 strong crew were forced to return to their day jobs.
No such calamities on UBS Switzerland who roared off towards Cape Horn and to South America beyond. Mar del Plata in Argentina had been withdrawn from the course, due to the fall out from the Falkands War and instead the fleet headed for Punta del Este in Uruguay, billed as a South American paradise.
The Roaring Forties proved to be not roaring at all, but the Southern Ocean gave them all a test, especially Atlantic Privateer which did an almighty broach as they surfed at around 20 knots. Even the spreaders disappeared underwater, the crew claimed afterwards, and Tracy Edwards struggled to hold things together in the galley. “The conditions were horrendous and I thought I was going to die. I’d be cooking and puking up into the sink at the same time,” she admitted in her autobiography Living Every Second.
Drum too was rampaging through the waters when she suddenly rolled twice and was knocked down on her side for around five minutes, which left the spinnaker shredded and a spinnaker bag, known as a turtle, wrapped round the propeller. Crewmember Micke Olsson, a trained diver, donned his wetsuit and diving gear for a dip in the freezing waters, but he was pulled under the stern of the boat, losing his facemask and mouthpiece. Eventually the turtle was cleared but in the process, Drum lost vital miles and time.
Race HQ’s radio link was buzzing with reports of damage caused by the strong winds, but these petered out completely as the Cape loomed into view. Unusually, it was surrounded by waters that could only be described as avuncular. The reason was the time of year. Normally the fleet would have arrived in late January, but the start of the 1985 race had been put back by a month and in March the landmark proved more like a tourist attraction than a sailor’s graveyard.
First round was Fehlmann, but it was the guys on Lion who hit the jackpot when they caught sight of Halley’s Comet making one of its rare appearances in the earth’s orbit. This was also the moment, between Cape Horn and Punta del Este, that the race really took off with skippers of UBS, Drum, Atlantic Privateer and Cote d’Or all fighting hard to be the first to Uruguay, the light headwinds adding extra spice to the action. In one seven hour period, the UBS crew completed 14 sail changes in a bid to keep up their speed, and this diligence paid dividends when the Swiss crew were first over the line, nine hours ahead of Drum and nine hours and 20 minutes before Atlantic Privateer. Behind the maxis, L’Esprit d’Equipe regained the overall handicap lead by a margin of nearly five hours.
The final leg proved a fascinating two-dimensional affair with the big maxis battling for a win on elapsed time and the rest of the fleet vying for a podium place on corrected time. Blake, lying second on elapsed time, could only win if UBS suffered breakages and Skip Novak on Drum, who had come second in Uruguay, was within 18 hours of Lion. But with fluky winds up the Brazilian coast, the Doldrums and the full might of the North Atlantic ahead, the race remained anything but a foregone conclusion.
On Drum, the precocious Grant Dalton won the ‘dick of the day’ award for describing himself as a ‘legend in the making’ and the crew enjoyed a hygiene moment when a rain squall offered a chance for a scrub, though Novak’s reference to it focussed on ‘a whole lot of spotty bums’.
The Azores High once again proved decisive. UBS veered east of the Azores and entered a frontal system which hurried them along, while Drum opted to pick up the southerly winds around the back of the High which slowed them down. With just a few days left, they were becalmed and the gap to the leader stretched to an irretrievable 500 nm, which at the finish line in Portsmouth translated into a 40 hour deficit.
They were even overtaken by Cote d’Or who sneaked across the line three and a half hours ahead of the frustrated Drum crew and things took a turn for the worse when Customs Officers, accompanied by sniffer dog, boarded the English boat just minutes after the finish to see whether the rock star had picked up any illegal substances in Uruguay.
Blake arrived soon after to retain second place on elapsed time and the little French boat L’Esprit d’Equipe arrived in eighth place, some four days after UBS, to take the 1985 Whitbread Trophy in front of a huge group of fans who had travelled across the Channel to applaud France’s emphatic victory, their first of the event.
...a whole lot of spotty bums
.