#whitbread 1981

1978. New Zealand had become a stopover for competing yachts.

I was staying at my grandparents’ home in Auckland, which overlooked the harbour. A Kiwi sailor, Peter Blake, was a crewman aboard the yacht, Heath’s Condor. I had taken a keen interest in the race since their departure from Cape Town.

I remember watching as the big, wooden, mahogany Condor sailed into Auckland Harbour carrying a massive yellow spinnaker. Condor won the leg to Auckland.

My life changed at that moment. I knew what I wanted to do.

I decided I had to do the offshore thing. I didn’t have a lot of experience. I hadn’t been offshore. I was a skiff sailor and an accountant.

I left my job and started offshore racing on keel boats doing the Admiral’s Cup, the Fiji Race, Noumea and the Hobart. I also took up sail-making and applied to Peter Blake with a view to joining his new build, a boat called Ceramco in the 1981/82 round-the-world.

Flyer in the 1981-82 Whitbread Round the World Race

Well, not the whole thing, this vid cuts off in Mar del Plata. For the Atlantic leg and finish, see here:

Especially because Paulo Martolini’s accident is almost exactly like Colin’s origin story:

“It’s been a great day, all about bringing this band of people back together,” said Cayard. “Enjoying a bit of racing on the water and a barbecue in the evening. It’s pretty cool to be here. Sharing old stories from past races, hearing the story again of Paolo Martinoni being rescued from going overboard in the Southern Ocean. That guy is so lucky to be alive.”

Martinoni was also in Genova, and more than 40 years later his story of survival still inspires sailors today. Thirty years old at the time, the young Martinoni was racing on board the Italian yacht Rolly Go from New Zealand to Punta del Este, Uruguay, in the 1981-82 edition of the race. It was dark, sailing at night through the Southern Ocean, and the boat was flying downwind under spinnaker, and also with a J4 headsail. 

“The spinnaker halyard broke and the spinnaker fell in the water so I went to try to get the sail back in,” he recalls. “But my back was caught by the sheet of the J4 and it lifted me overboard and I was in the water.”

The crew slowed the boat and started looking for their missing teammate. “They were looking with flashlights but they couldn’t see me. They got so close to me the boat almost sailed over the top of me. I caught a line in the water and held on. I was shouting, shouting, until they could find me. They wrapped a rope around my wrist and pulled me back on board.