Sailing Magazine
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 had to wait for the Postman to deliver the mail with a typed report which had to be subbed and typeset. All time-consuming stuff!
Anyway the race was ultimately won by the Mexican yachtsman Ramon Carlin aboard his stock-standard Swan 65.
“In spite of a suspect masthead stay which prevented Ramon Carlin’s ‘Sayula’ from setting any big headsails on the final leg from Rio back to Portsmouth, the stock Swan 65 with her polyglot crew (among them Laurie Wale of Cape Town) finished well enough to preserve her overall lead”.
Sadly this race came with the loss of life and many questions asked as a result.
I find the following quote from crewman Butch Dalrymple-Smith very telling: “After the capsize on the second leg (which they won), Dalrymple-Smith observed: “The best bilge pump is a bucket in the hands of a frightened man”. He also said later that he wouldn’t want to race round the world a second time, but neither would he want to be left out of any such race.”
This editorial is a wonderful wrap of what was a great race and adventure.
READ IT HERE: 1974 05 – SA Yachting – OCR
