Sailing Magazine
By Richard Crockett
It’s that time of the year again when the annual Mykonos dash from Cape Town to Saldanha Bay starts – on Friday in fact, so here’s an opportunity to share some history from the 1999 race.
There was no report in SAILING Mag on the race, other than a cover pic showing a rather blustery start. The report in SA Yachting mag revealed little other than the wind was about 40 knots at the start, and that there was damage to the fleet as it headed to Saldanha.
It also revealed some finger trouble with boats starting the Saturday Bay race at the wrong times and there being a high retirement count as a result.
But all of this paled into insignificance when it was revealed much later that the race record set by ‘Zeeslang’ was bust by three boats – being ‘Wizard’, ‘Warrior’ and ‘Merlin’. All three were inside the record which ‘Wizard’ set at 4 hours 52 minutes – shaving 1 hour and 23 minutes off ‘Zeeslang’s’ time.
READ THE RACE REPORT HERE: Pages from 1999 04 – SA Yachting – OCR
READ THE RECORD BREAKING REPORT HERE: 1999 mykonos race record – SAILING Magazine – OCR
