Sailing Magazine
By Richard Crockett
It’s a week ago since the very first Cape to Rio Race started.
I felt it time to tone down the ‘Jakaranda’ saga which has hogged much of the limelight since the start, but Bruce Dalling, being a hero of the South African nation, simply gets the publicity without trying. But I must say that he is a true gentleman who is never shy to thank all those who help him, which is why I was interested in Dalling’s contact with the Mayor of Cape Town as he departed.
On departure, Dalling traced the Mayor to the Newlands cricket ground, where Western Province are playing Natal, and in a radio message said he wished to convey special thanks to those who worked during the night to get the craft seaworthy again. Nice touch Bruce.
Back on the race course, these are the leading positions today:
Line Honours
1 Ocean Spirit
2 Graybeard
3 Hamburg
4 Applemist
5 Striana
Handicap
1 Eclipse
2 Hamburg
3 Striana
4 Albatros
5 Arion
We get to hear more about the ‘Wayfarer’ saga, and how ‘Applemsit’ and ‘Eclipse’ have suddenly jumped into the reckoning. But conditions are light, making progress slow, specially aboard the heavier yachts.
“Race Leaders in Jostle for Wind”. Leading yachts in the Race to Rio, a week old today, are jostling for favourable winds in mid-ocean as the south-east trades weaken slowly.
READ MORE HERE: 1971 01 23 – Rio 1971 – Dave Elcock Collection -000551 – OCR
“Rio Leaders Going Like A Breeze”. Just after dawn yesterday and just westward of Greenwich meridian we in the guardship were spectators to an exciting mid-ocean duel now taking place roughly in line with Walvis Bay between the joint leaders in the Cape-to-Rio race – Ocean Spirit and Graybeard.
READ MORE HERE: 1971 01 23 – Rio 1971 – Dave Elcock Collection -000500 – OCR
“Cape Yacht Jumps 30 Places”. As ‘Ocean Spirit’ and ‘Graybeard’ continued to fight it out – last night they were only one·sea mile apart – two smaller yachts, ‘Applemist’ and ‘Eclipse’, yesterday slipped into the ranks of the top 10 in the Cape-to-Rio race.
READ MORE HERE: 1971 01 23 – Rio 1971 – Dave Elcock Collection -000501 – OCR
“Well, You Don’t Enter Races to Lose, Do You?”
READ MORE HERE: 1971 01 23 – Rio 1971 – Dave Elcock Collection -000503 – OCR
“Cape to Rio Roundup with Frank Robb”. I shall not inflict upon you yet another description of the start of the Cape to Rio Race last Saturday. Let me tell you only this: When those 58 yachts surged over the Start Line and the gay spinnakers blossomed and they headed for the far horizon and Rio, I and scores of thousands of other spectators went “high” – because, brother, it was a sight out of this world!
READ MORE HERE: 1971 01 23 – Rio 1971 – Dave Elcock Collection -000502 – OCR
“Wayfarer: Stormy Tale with A Happy Ending”. I do not wear pyjamas. I am not in the habit of wearing anything at all when I go to bed. But just lately I have been dossing down in a pair of swim-trunks, topped by shorts, shirt, track-suit, boiler-suit, Jersey, towel, a ski-anorak, cloth cape, oilskins and a second oilskin jacket over all that – all at once. And, in a small yacht south of Cape Agulhas in raging seas and force 11 winds, the get-up didn’t seem at all inappropriate.
READ MORE HERE: 1971 01 23 – Rio 1971 – Dave Elcock Collection -000353 – OCR
“There Goes Jakaranda on the Way to Rio”. There goes ‘Jakaranda’! At 9.30 yesterday morning, exactly 47 hours after she had come chugging into port with a broken rudder stock, Cape-to-Rio race yawl ‘Jakaranda’ slipped her mooring and, to the resounding cheer of a crowd of several hundred well-wishers, echoed by three blasts on the siren of tug ‘T. E. Bates’, she sailed out of the harbour.
READ MORE HERE: 1971 01 23 – Rio 1971 – Dave Elcock Collection -000311 – OCR
“Aussie Eye on SA Yachts”. Australian yachtsmen will be watching the Cape·to·Rio fleet with the kind of interest one horse trainer showed in another’s string at the dawn gallops.
READ MORE HERE: 1971 01 23 – Rio 1971 – Dave Elcock Collection -000530 – OCR
