Sydney – Hobart – Auckland

Before the fleet set off for the third leg, the crews heard of the tragic death of Sir Peter Blake, who was murdered while on an expedition in the Amazon. Many taking part in the race had been inspired by Blake’s achievements in all forms of the sport and most had either sailed, worked or drank with him. The sense of loss was palpable and the racing fraternity in Sydney was cast into a gloom of the darkest proportions.

Three weeks later, after some had visited England for Blake’s funeral, the race resumed with a foray into the classic Sydney-Hobart race, characterised once more by challenging weather, and much more besides. In the early stages, the fleet were shrouded in smoke from the disastrous New South Wales bushfires, then later endured a spectacular water spout and stormy conditions off the NSW south coast, and then were forced to park up in Tasmania’s Storm Bay.

Knut Frostad on Djuice reported a serious leak which saw their bow compartments fill with water, in much the same way as illbruck’s had flooded on the second leg and lost four nm while crew bailed out.

Then Amer Sports Too reported a failure of a strop in the headstay, forcing them to drop all their sails in a bid to save the mast. They carried on, planning to replace the strop in Hobart.

Tyco heard they had been disqualified from the Sydney-Hobart after failing to contact ACS Race Control or Hobart Race control at Green Cape, which was mandatory under sailing instructions. Naughty Tyco.

Things turned serious when SEB was forced to fit her emergency rudder after her main rudder became damaged and had to retire from the leg. Krantz was just relieved that his crew were safe.

“What has happened is very sad for us, but most important in a situation of this magnitude is ensuring the crew and the boat are safe,” he said. “In the prevailing conditions here, we would not venture to carry on racing with an emergency rudder.”

While all this was going on, McDonald was up front and keeping his head, despite being caught in the middle of the water spout. At Cape Raoul, ASSA ABLOY left the other yachts becalmed and sailed away from them towards the finish, but he admitted later that he had been alarmed by the twister.

“I was pretty scared. We were heading right for the middle of it and altered course to try and avoid it. illbruck was near us at the time and they did a slightly better job at getting out of its way. It turned straight towards us. I assumed it would go downwind and it didn't, it came across the wind and we were in the middle of it. I didn't know when it was going to stop. If we'd had the sails up, there was every chance that we would have had them just all whipped off.”

After a three hour pit stop in Hobart, they set off again for Auckland though the problems for Neal’s wife, Lisa on Amer Sports Too were more complicated than first thought after a collision with a whale damaged the rudder, on top of the forestay failure. Rather than a quick repair job in Hobart, they were faced with a longer stay.

“We have to now leave Hobart, go to the restart line for leg three, off the Iron Pot, and restart our race, before we can retire for a second emergency stop this evening,” explained Mrs McDonald. ”Until we lift the boat out of the water, we will not know for certain what is wrong with the rudder, but the rudder has been damaged, both on the leading edge as well as a significant crack on the aft edge going forward.”

The run to Auckland was, by comparison, plain sailing for most of the fleet and ASSA ABLOY kept up their cracking form by pulling to the front though Rudiger seemed distinctly nervous during the navigators chat as the fleet approached Cape Reinga.

“Hi, my name is Rudi... and uh...I'm a chronic gambler. Meanwhile, since this last gamble has paid off so far,” he joked.

In fact, down below, things on ASSA ABLOY had become a bit hairy. One of their key crew, Jason Carrington, had fallen seriously ill after collapsing on deck just after the Hobart restart. He was suffering from serious abdominal pains and fever and it was decided he should remain in his bunk, but the on board medic Klaus Nylof had his work cut out when two other crew also became incapacitated through illness and injury.

Rather than slow them down, these problems galvanised the remaining crew who all pulled together and stormed along to victory. It wasn’t long before McDonald had been given a celebratory ducking by his team-mates.

Dalton arrived in second place two hours later, but the battle for third place had tacticians on Tyco, illbruck and NewsCorp facing an east versus west dilemma. Tyco decided for a more easterly route ten nm from the finish and split, but illbruck decided to stick with main rival NewsCorp and let Tyco loose, which cost them a podium place and handed Kiwi Kevin Shoebridge a well deserved moment of glory in front of his home crowd.