Sailing Magazine
by Richard Crockett
Racing around the world in the first Whitbread Race was, to some degree, was done by trial and error! Well that’s according to Butch Dalrymple-Smith who said this:
“When we set out, we really knew little about what was in store for us. The only information available came from the Clipper ships of yesteryear, and from Sir Francis Chichester’s book about his solo navigation in 1967.
“I remember telling one journalist before the start, that the race could be considered a success if all yachts had been accounted for by the finish. There were no tracking beacons, and radios were unreliable, so any of the yachts could have simply disappeared, like many of the Clipper ships had done before. By the end, I felt we had been let off lightly by losing only three men in the whole fleet.”
Oh, and of the caviar? Our budding circumnavigator said: “The freezer was a godsend and when a group of journalists visited ‘Sayula’ in Cape Town, they were amazed to find we still had 11 jars of caviar left after 45 days at sea. They could only guess what we started out with.”
This is interesting as it tells the story of racing around the world – “back in the day” – when satellite coms, freeze-dried food and the basics of modern-day ocean racing were very, very different to what we know today where weight saving is paramount and crew comfort something unheard of!
It’s another good read.
READ IT HERE: Pages from 2010 10 – SAILING Magazine – OCR
