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The drama continued into the third leg. Within a few miles of leaving Sydney, Pen Duick VI was dismasted for the second time, following their misfortune in the first leg which left them languishing in Rio for five days making repairs. This time, however, they headed quickly back to Sydney where riggers worked round the clock to replace the mast before Tabarly restarted the race, though the delay meant his chances of making the restart in Rio for Leg 4 were slim.

Also, for the second time, Bernie Hocking disappeared overboard GBII. This time, with winds blowing Force 5-6, the crew were not able to recover him despite a search that lasted more than two hours, during which time, they neither saw him nor the dan buoy that was thrown to him after he lost his footing while tidying up in the pulpit. He was gone forever.

In his log, Blyth wrote, “Other yachts would have taken this harder or more emotionally. The reason its not affecting us so much is that once again the training of the Paras comes out. You’re steeled towards death. All of us in the yacht have seen active service so have seen death before. This is more personal, but we keep our thoughts to ourselves. He will rarely be mentioned now, more out of respect than anything else. Bernie was one of us. He wouldn’t want it any other way.”

Blyth and his crew expressed their loss by sailing the boat hard and fast to Rio, taking line honours for the first time in the race.

The passage through the Southern Ocean provided the crews with their most memorable moments of the race though some claimed it was monotonous and boring.

“One comes in from the cockpit, little is said, one eats, one sleeps, one goes one degree only further than animal existence,” wrote one crewmember in the Sayula II log.

This monotony led to problems. There were rumours of major conflicts between the crewmembers though after six weeks at sea, on top of the two previous legs, a bond of secrecy had developed between the crews which prevented rows from becoming public.

According to Dr Robin Leach, doctor on Second Life, “One of three or four members of the crew would quite unannounced become the person to moan at for a few days. The issues were often trifling and that crew member had to take the abuse that was given to him until the needle was pointed to another. Trifling things became blown up at sea. Somebody had a perpetual sniff. One seat was always occupied by the same person. Somebody started reading a book before someone else finished it. Someone was late on watch again. The heads were blocked and no one admitted to being the last to use them.”

Initially, skippers had resented the need to let organisers know their positions, but following the deaths on legs two and three, the importance of relaying the information was slowly recognised by the crews and with the help of sextants – there was no GPS on board in those early days – they worked out roughly where they were.

“Most of time, we had no clue where we were,” admits Ainslie on Second Life. “The readings we took using our instruments gave us a rough idea, but it was only when we were 50 nms from a coastline, when we could tune in to the radio direction finder using our receivers that we had any precise information and obviously there weren’t too many times when we were 50 nms from a coastline.”

Positions were supposed to be logged twice weekly. If no report was received from a yacht for seven days, the organisers informed Lloyds who passed the message to merchant shipping and also to BBC World Service, which mentioned that a report was overdue. The Lloyds appeal invariably brought a response within a few days. The BBC announcement generated nothing.

For the leading skippers, this haphazard way of tracking positions was used tactically, in an attempt to ensure they stayed at the top of the leaderboard when the results were released each week by Race HQ. It was a means of maximising publicity for the boats and their sponsors since the media, invariably, were interested only in the leading boat.

The landmarks came in useful, but rounding Cape Horn, the most famous landmark of them all, filled many crews with dread. In 1973 the number of sporting yachts that had survived this rounding numbered less than 10. At 55°56' south and 67°19' west, the extreme tip of the southern American continent, the 1,400 feet of harsh rock marked a point where the topographic formation and intensity of atmospheric phenomena which surround it turn Cape Horn into one of the most feared places on the planet. History was littered with reports of passages that had been ravaged by gale-force winds, freezing rain and icebergs.

Icebergs posed the most dangerous threat of all and while lookouts stationed at the bow could alert helmsmen to the ones that rose above the water, it was the growlers - that lay just below the surface - that potentially were likely to do the most damage. Even with radar, these were impossible to detect until the boats were on top of them.

At Cape Horn, HMS Endurance, the British Antarctic research and guard vessel, was standing by to ensure a safe passage through some of the most treacherous waters on the planet. The more macho crews felt it was wet nursing gone too far. Others claimed this was progress.

Tauranga stopped at Port Stanley to pick up water supplies and while there bought a whole sheep for $3….but they lost 12 hours in the process after having to stand off in bad weather before entering the harbour.

The Cape behind them, the fleet turned north toward the sun and warmth of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Blyth’s GBII was the first to finish in Rio, followed by Second Life and Sayula II, but most arrived in time for Mardi Gras, which was everything the brochure had promised. For the first time in five months, the crews could forget about racing and get down to some heavy duty partying.