Sailing Magazine
by Richard Crockett
It should be all plain sailing on the “nursery slopes” to Rio unless one is meticulously prepared and every last part of the yacht and her equipment has been checked, double checked and even triple checked.
Sadly for the German yacht ‘HIC III’ her race was over within the first hour of the start as her mast broke and she limped back to RCYC looking sad and sorry with mast debris littering her deck.
Her dismasting made the front page of the Weekend Argus, on the Saturday evening of the start day – just a few hours after the start. Those newspaper guys in those days pushed hard for their stories and to ensure they were first with the news.
The major headline was the fact that Ondine was well ahead of the fleet and sailing in a 45 knot gale. But it was the Durban yacht, ‘Mainstay’, skippered by David Cox which led the fleet out of Cape Town – and there’s a pic to prove it too.
Once again the printed news media did the race proud with 7 pages of news, photographs and more, all printed a matter of hours after the race starting. Plus the race made the editorial page too!
READ IT ALL HERE: 1973 01 13 – weekend argus – REDUCED – stitched final
