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To win the overall race, the British navy entry Adventure had to beat its Mexican rival Sayula II by three and a half days. With 1600 nms to go to Portsmouth, Adventure was becalmed for six hours, but then began to make progress in the right direction.

The start on the last leg had been staggered. Organisers understood the power of publicity and it was felt this would be maximised if all the boats finished at the same time so the larger boats started later than the smaller ones. This led to major grief among skippers in the larger boats and staggered starts were thereafter scrapped.

Sayula II was hampered by rigging problems, but kept it quiet from the rest of the fleet. On the approach home, Adventure made good use of local knowledge – off the Isle of Wight, she was nearly becalmed and in a foul tide, so dropped anchor with only 37 nms to go to the finish. Then she got some wind to go south of Wight in the darkness and crossed the finish line in third place, which gave them the overall runners up prize. Sayula II arrived in fourth place to take the first Whitbread Trophy title.

First over the line, five days earlier, was Blyth’s GBII, completing the course in 144 days which was a record for a round the world passage at that time. His aim had been to win line honours for each leg, realising that the handicap system did not favour GBII for overall victory. On three of the four legs, she was the fastest boat and on corrected time, she finished sixth.

As one of the only boats with a sponsor (Jack Hayward, the multimillionaire businessman), Blyth was keen for a good show in the media, but arriving home on Maundy Thursday scuppered his plans for a big publicity drive since no newspapers were published on Good Friday!

Completing the circumnavigation placed the crews in a small and exclusive elite of sailors. Blyth was already a member, but years later, he said the race had opened his eyes in more ways than one. “When we came back to Portsmouth, we had a debriefing where we all talked about what had gone right and what had gone wrong in the race. I decided to let someone else take it, but was a bit shocked when I heard the crew talk about my leadership. They said that I dished out the praise when it was needed, but that I was too quick to criticise. I wasn’t happy to hear that, but I have never forgotten it so the whole experience was very useful as well as being a lot of fun.”