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Amazingly, all the repairs were completed on time and the restart went ahead on the due date. But within a fortnight, the radio was buzzing again with reports of more carnage as a further three yachts were dismasted and Flyer was forced to ease off the pace after two violent broaches in the Southern Ocean weakened the rigging.

But as the miles were negotiated, so the competition between Ceramco and Flyer began to intensify. There was no automatic means of logging positions so monitoring progress, when it was totally dependent on skippers volunteering information, proved difficult and unreliable. As the two boats locked horns in the Southern Ocean, the skippers started to use these haphazard communications as part of their tactics.

The competitive Van Rietschoten was the worst culprit. Divulge an inch and the competition will grab a mile, was his mantra, one that was reinforced by his watch leader Dalton. So when one night, van Rietschoten suffered a heart attack and fell unconscious, the emergency was kept secret. The first the competition would know about it was when they saw a body bag floating by, the skipper said later, but neither organisers nor rivals had an inkling that Flyer was dealing with such a major crisis.

Van Rietschoten: “Fremantle was ten days sailing away. If I was to die, the critical period was within the first two to three days so any diversion would have been wasted. As for Ceramco, the New Zealanders were breathing down our necks. If they had known I had a health problem, they would have pushed their boat even harder. We had to stay ahead and the less they knew about my condition, the better. When you die at sea, you are buried over the side. Perhaps those Ceramco boys might have spotted me drifting by and I was determined that that would be the only thing they would see or hear from Flyer on that matter!”

On the approach to Auckland, all of New Zealand was hoping it would be their boy wonder Blake emerging first out of the mist. It was felt his local knowledge would aid Ceramco’s progress and after the disappointment of the first leg, it would be a fitting victory. But as the front runners headed south into Auckland after rounding the North Cape, they encountered strong headwinds which favoured the bigger and heavier Flyer. A small lead was turned into an eight-hour advantage giving the Dutch boat their second win in two legs. Inevitably, the 6’4” blond Blake, who had been conspicuous at the wheel from some way out, was given a rapturous welcome by hundreds of boats and the excitement grew when it was later discovered that Ceramco had won the leg on corrected time.

“Van Rietschoten performed immaculately as did Blake,” Charles Williams remembers. “It was the competition between them that not only created an enormous amount of interest in the race all around the world, but also transformed it from a purely amateur event into a serious yacht race. They set the world ablaze and it captured everyone’s imagination. In the previous two races, people were taking spinnakers down at night. Can you imagine!”