Southampton - Punta del Este - Fremantle - Auckland - Punta del Este - Fort Lauderdale - Southampton
Winner Maxi class: NZ Endeavour
Winner: Yamaha
As if the event needed an extra edge after the thrills and spills of four years earlier, a new class, the Whitbread 60, was introduced, sounding the death knell for the maxis in future races.
The new boat was conceived to keep down costs. They were less expensive to build, maintain and campaign than the maxis. They were also light, strong and fast so professional yachtsmen, whatever their pedigree, were clamouring to get on the track.
Some of the biggest names on the racing circuit were signing up. Dennis Conner, best known for his America’s Cup campaigns, entered for the first time with his W60 Winston and came up against another AC veteran and Whitbread first timer Chris Dickson in Tokio. In the maxi corner were another set of heavyweights in Grant Dalton on New Zealand Endeavour and Lawrie Smith in the modified Spanish maxi Fortuna.
The three year build up to the 1993 Whitbread had revolved mainly around boats and whether the W60 could outclass the maxis, but all the talk on the day of the start once again centred around those gnarled, thrusting seadogs on the helm and which of them had what it takes to win the most coveted offshore title in the world.
By the end of the first leg from Southampton to Punta del Este, no one was any clearer. Before leaving it was said that Smith, whose Fortuna maxi had been converted from a sloop into a ketch, had grown tired of people ringing his phone and doing dog barking impersonations down the line, but the fears were well-founded when the new rig, which gave him more sail area than anyone else, went down with the first strong puff of wind. Smith was forced to retire from the race, and limped home where he found his phone still ringing…but this time, the message was to put a smile back on his face.
Dalton blasted down to the Doldrums, well ahead of everyone else, then sat becalmed and watched as the others caught up. The only boat not on his radar was Tokio, which had headed further south to find more wind. It proved an inspired tactical move by Dickson and Dalton had to get a wriggle on in the final straits, arriving in Punta just three hours ahead of the clever Dickson.
The phone call to Smith’s Lymington home was an offer to take over as skipper on Swedish W60 Intrum Justitia after Roger Nilsson sustained an injury. He was on a plane in a flash, desperate to restore his reputation and resume his place as title contender.
Others were not so keen to head out into the Southern Ocean and one crewmember on the maxi Uruguay Natural jumped off the boat and into the sea just minutes before the start. Many wished they had done the same as the very worst of the ocean’s demons turned the second leg into a grim and terrifying experience, huge seas and freezing cold, plus icebergs the size of shopping malls, serving to keep the adrenalin pumping 24/7.
“Little can compare for dramatic sailing with surfing down huge walls of water under full sail past a magnificent luminescent iceberg,” chirruped Glen Sowry on New Zealand Endeavour.
First to suffer was US Women’s Challenge, the W60 skippered by Dawn Riley. The clew of their spinnaker was wrenched out, forcing them into a Chinese gybe which saw the mainsail spilt into two. It took more than two days to repair and the weather, in the form of a violent snowstorm, did not help.
On New Zealand Endeavour Dalton was chancing his arm by flying his full-size spinnaker and the mizzen gennaker in 35 knots of wind. His lead over the next boat Intrum Justitia was 65 nm, but this blinding pace could not be sustained.
“David Brooke had just been hoisted to the top of the rig to lock the halyard off when a particularly tricky wave caught the stern and threw the boat into a broach. Burt had a rough ride up the main mast as the boat thrashed on her side before she regained her footing.
“In an effort to get the boat back on her feet, the mizzen gennaker halyard was released to enable the gennaker to be pulled back on board. One wave was all it took to snatch the gennaker out of the crew’s hands and trawl it astern. The sudden load on the mizzen mast, generated by the gennaker, was enough to snap the mast off at the third spreader. It was a shell-shocked and depressed crew that cleaned up the expensive lump of scrap metal crashing around the air,” Sowry wrote later in Yachting World.
Severely underpowered, they carried on and their strop only subsided when they heard a distress signal coming off the Italian W60 Brooksfield, who were bailing out water after their rudder shaft was ripped out in a gale, leaving a large hole in the hull. There was water everywhere, which wiped out their communications system and for hours, Race HQ, who launched a major rescue operation, were unable to make contact.
Winston and Intrum stopped racing and headed to the Italians aid but it was La Poste, the French maxi who reached Brooksfield first 12 hours after the first SOS. She stood by in case the boat sank and waited for two US Navy ships to come and escort her to port. Everyone carried on, but an almighty fuss kicked off later over the time compensation for her rescuers.
Smith headed south, straight for the icebergs, in the hope of picking up winds and once again it paid dividends. In one day, Intrum set a new record, logging over 425 nm, sailing at an average of 17.75, speeds that Smith later said could be bettered, given the right conditions.
On Dolphin & Youth, the young guns W60, the rudder broke, but they lashed it back on and continued. On Spanish W60 Galicia there were delamination problems and Winston too was found to be suffering with the same thing.
But it was Smith on Intrum who crossed the Fremantle finish line first, establishing the W60 as a true thoroughbred, capable of standing up to the roughest conditions and what’s more, capable of some truly extraordinary speeds. The fatigue suffered by crews had also reached new levels, but that merely served to accentuate the importance of fitness both in the remainder of the race and subsequent events.
The race into Auckland always brings out the best in Kiwis yearning to hear their names chanted by local crowds, who flock to the finish, regardless of time or weather.
And so it was in this leg as Dalton and Dickson enjoyed a battle royale for New Zealand honours.
Conner was effectively ruled out of contention when he made a high risk tactical move south to find more favourable winds. A short term blast was followed by days of snail pace momentum and Winston lagged well behind by the time Dickson, in his W60 Tokio, and Dalton, in the maxi New Zealand Endeavour made their dramatic entrance into the harbour.
They were neck and neck, quite literally, but as they edged their way closer to the line, Dickson stalled. One could almost hear the gasps of horror as this nail-biting denouement was played out and the look of grim determination on Dalton’s face as he overtook and heaved across the line was enough to prompt a surly, ungracious comment from his opponent in a television interview.
From that point, it was Dalton who held all the cards, not just in the race but in the nation’s affections.
Cape Horn can inspire prosaic sailors to poetry, but on this occasion, the logs barely mention it since, uncharacteristically, the landmark was a picture of calm and tranquillity, creating disappointment among the apprentices and surprise among commuters.
Even Eric Tabarly on La Poste admitted, “I’ve been round the Horn five times and have never seen it in its true colours.”
In fact the entire leg was a series of surprises. There were no sleigh rides in the Southern Ocean and Dalton covered 2,500 nm in pouring rain without once being able to hoist his spinnaker.
But there was enough wind in the first few days for the W60s to work up some top speeds, leaving the maxis churning in their wake. Yamaha broke Intrum's record by logging 427 nm in 24 hours, but then Intrum came back with a 428-miler to recapture it.
Once again it was Smith on Intrum who was blazing the trail, though he caused a stir when, on the approach to the Horn and leading the fleet, he shot north far earlier than expected. He sailed into the Horn on a fast reach, while closer on the wind, Tokio and Galicia slowed up. Intrum’s lead stretched to almost 100 nm over Tokio and half that over New Zealand Endeavour, but the mood nose-dived when the wind dropped and Smith’s boat stayed in the same place for hours. Smith’s mood wasn’t helped when NZE overtook him, its huge sails casting wind shadows over his path and slowing his progress yet more. At the finish line, the margin was an itsy bitsy five minutes - and to Smith’s great frustration, it was in Dalton’s favour.
This time it was Smith who put the boot in at the end of the leg, claiming that Dalton and his Maxi were roughing up the playing field.
"They're supposed to be faster, but they're not," said Smith who by then was convinced the race’s future lay in W60s, rather than maxis.
"All Dalton is doing is getting in the way. He was covering my wind all the way in."
Dalton wasn’t bothered in the slightest. The win had given him the overall lead with just two legs still to go.
Days and days of savage headwinds saw a decisive contest between maxi and W60 and it was the latter that came off best in terms of performance, though the relentless push for speed turned the Atlantic shores, north and south, into a giant boat repair yard.
Dolphin & Youth headed for Rio when the bow on the leeward side of the boat began to flex dangerously through delamination, but Dalton decided to make repairs at sea when the same thing happened on New Zealand Endeavour. The bunks were dismantled and used to brace the delaminated portion of the bow. The crew on La Poste were similarly resourceful when their bow started to delaminate and they too carried on.
Chris Dickson was down below when Tokio ran into problems too, but the sequence of sounds and motion were very familiar and he knew in an instant that the mast had gone. When he peered out, he could see it dragging in the water, taking with it any hopes he had of winning the race. Not one to dwell on misfortune, he called the crew to collect the pieces and jury-rig a sail, then headed for the nearby port of Santos, Brazil. Despite the setback, they showed remarkable fortitude in constructing a new mast from the wreckage in 36 hours and returning once more to the race track.
It was an awesome effort, but it left the way clear for Intrum and Yamaha to steal a march. Ross Field had recruited a meteorologist for this leg to act as a full on wind-seeker and this attention to detail paid dividends as Yamaha stayed in decent breezes while Intrum stopped dead in the Doldrums.
Yamaha crossed the finish line in Ft. Lauderdale first, seizing the class lead from Tokio and in the maxi class, Merit Cup posted a win while Dalton was plunged into a delamination depression.
For the anoraks, this final leg proved the most compelling as route, weather, position, guts and more guts came to the fore. No, not the mal de mer guts kind, but the type that navigators have to show if their skipper needs an all or nothing result. Which ones would plot a safe course up the US East Coast, flying along with the Gulf Stream current and who would risk the ‘Go East’ option in search of stronger and steady winds?
Merit Cup and Brooksfield took the gamble and flew off at a cracking pace while everyone else played it safe until the time came for them to move out, a manoeuvre that was greeted by a full blown gale. The spinnakers went up and their speeds doubled to around 25 knots.
Gales were followed by thick fog and some desperately close encounters as Dolphin & Youth bounced between the obstacles, missing first a cargo container ship by around 15m and then a massive iceberg by a boat length.
The fog lifted and the gales returned which for Heineken, the all-girls boat that changed its name mid-race from Women’s Challenge was almost the last straw as they watched their third rudder break off and float away. A replacement rudder was brought out to her and she carried on.
In Southampton a massive flotilla was awaiting the front-runners and hoping to see local skipper Lawrie Smith make a triumphant return, but it wasn’t to be. Dickson’s Tokio was in blistering form, covering 120 nm in the last six hours to cross the line first but he still failed to make it on to the overall podium. Winston finished second and Field’s Yamaha third, to win the W60 class on overall time. Smith finished second overall after a hard-fought and gripping contest.
Dalton’s was first over the line to win the maxi class and maintained all the way to the champagne bar that maxis were best. It was his last opportunity for a gripe. The end of the 1993-94 race marked the end of maxi racing in the Whitbread, but over the next four years, Dalton became almost evangelical in his conversion to W60s, describing maxis by comparison as ‘slave ships’.
I’ve been round the Horn five times and have never seen it in its true colours...
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