News

by Richard Crockett Not to overload your reading today, I have chosen just 6 newspaper cuttings. Opening today’s news is a report and photos of the Flying Fifteen Worlds held off Durban in April 2001. It’s also appropriate as Campbell Alexander and Ralph Thomas recently returned from the Flying Fifteen Worlds in Australia. The other news cuttings shared are about Shosholoza – and it’s hard to comprehend that her exploits and those of her crew took place 18 years ago …

By Richard Crockett I remember this race very vividly for many different reasons – and the extremely diverse fleet that competed. So today I will depart from my normal route of magazine features, and bring you a series of 7 newspaper cuttings of the race dated today – but 33 years ago. Yip, this race was that long ago! Below are the headline teasers. Please click on the link to read them and bask in some history. Late Entry Just …

by Richard Crockett I only have sketchy info in my archives on the 3rd leg of the 1973 Whitbread Round the World Race so unfortunately cannot share a full report. I can only assume that leg finished after publication deadlines, with the next leg starting with similar timing, hence no full report. One must remember that back in days of yore instant messaging, mobile phones, e-mail and all the modern communications we enjoy today, simply did not exist. Instead one …

by Richard Crockett With ‘Jakaranda’ out of the Whitbread Race after just one leg, the South African interest no doubt waned, despite this being an epic race. Fortunately SA Yachting magazine covered the race in full. Their December 1973 issue opened like this: “We close up the magazine for December with Tabarly and Pen Duick VI finishing way ahead of the rest of the Whitbread Round the world fleet in the second leg of the great race – surely one …

by Richard Crockett Jack Gruter, a Jakaranda crewman wrote an editorial on his experiences competing in the first leg of the 1973 Whitbread Round the World Race. This was no traditional well planned campaign, rather a last-minute, perhaps even a last ditch attempt at getting the boat ready in the UK to race to Cape Town. “The crowning point of a journey that took us across the wide Atlantic from Portsmouth to Cape Town on the first leg of the …

by Richard Crockett Something I was not consciously aware of until Peter Koehorst sent me his scrap book of cuttings from the first Whitbread Round the World Race in 1973, was that ‘Jakaranda’ entered the race and completed the first leg to Cape Town before being withdrawn. I have not yet managed to ascertain the reasons for that decisions. However, Peter Koehorst was a crewman aboard, and John Goodwin the skipper. Other crew were Captain W Damarell, WO. M Avery, …

by Richard Crockett The more I dig into this event the more I realise that it needs to be fully documented and researched due to the many different guises under which it has been raced. The race in December 2000 appears to have been aimed at making it a family affair with the yachties in the family racing and the landlubbers travelling on the ‘RMS St Helena’ to the island where they would meet up and enjoy Christmas together. What …

By Richard Crockett In the CASA (Cruising Association of South Africa) news bulletin of March 1986 Bill Rabinowitz, the CASA scribe, wrote the following: Readers may well be a little perplexed: First there was the Southstar, then the Mariners’ Wharf Challenge and now the Stannic Southstar. Quite a little story could be written about the organisation of this race. He was absolutely correct, as researching info on this race is like trying to find hen’s teeth! Various sponsors names are …

by Richard Crockett The first Stannic Southstar race to St Helena Island and back in 1986 was a singlehanded affair, with the second race in 1989 being a two-handed race. Adding the extra crew added to the entry numbers, albeit marginally. Favourites going in to the race were Bertie Reed and Tony Abbott, both singlehanders from the previous race, and both sailing with and extra crew this time. However it was not the favourites who romped home for victory. The …

by Richard Crockett I was recently asked questions about the Southstar Race, a 3700nm singlehanded race in Miura’s from Cape Town to St Helena and back. It was generously sponsored by Stannic. The first race was in 1986, and was won by Bertie Reed, who called it “the toughest race I’ve ever sailed”. Reed predicted that the following race would see 15 – 20 boats on the start line. Sadly that level of support was never achieved and the race …

by Richard Crockett On Tuesday and Wednesday I shared info on the Agulhas Race from Simonstown to Port Elizabeth, giving an overall report as published in SA Yachting Magazine, and first-hand accounts from THE owners/skippers of ‘Sewin’, ‘Zeeslang’ and ‘Corsair II’. Today sees this mini-series being wrapped up with extracts from Arthur Holgate’s ‘Titch’ and ‘Viking’ skippered by Fred Smithers. Holgate was always a man of very few words as he simply preferred to get out and do it rather …

by Richard Crockett Following on from yesterday when I shared some general information on the 1962 Agulhas Race to Port Elizabeth and how the owner of the RCOD ‘Sewin’ praised her skipper Ted Kuttel for the performance of their little yacht. The ultimate winner of that race was the motor-sailer ‘Corsair’ skippered by Stan Jeffrey. His ketch was an unlikely winner being a heavy ketch-rigged motor-sailer, yet she was driven hard and was far more robust and able to be …

by Richard Crockett Ever since I dug out some really old reports on the Agulhas Race from my archives, I have been planning to share them. So here goes! The 1962 race, which started on Boxing Day, was to Port Elizabeth. It was into a stiff 25 – 30 knot South Easter, with a forecast gale on Agulhas. The report entitled “A Hard Gale-Studded Race” gives a brief outline of the race which took just under three days to complete …

by Richard Crockett The author of this feature, written for the October 2002 issue of SAILING Magazine, was John Vigor. I knew Vigor when he was a newspaper journalist in Durban, writing a humorous daily column under the pseudonym of “The Idler”. He is a fine journalist and avid yachtie too, having cut his teeth in distance racing with David Cox aboard ‘Diana K’ in the 1971 Cape to Rio Race. He emigrated many years ago, sailing his 30-footer, together …

by Richard Crockett I have always advocated a good mix of racing and fun sailing to boost numbers on the water as not everyone is in to racing week in and week out without a sniff of a good result. Fun sailing can, and does, bring good participation – just look at the Mykonos Offshore Race last week, and the example I will use this morning of the West Coast Cruise of 2001 as I stumbled upon it while browsing …