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The final leg proved a fascinating two-dimensional affair with the big maxis battling for a win on elapsed time and the rest of the fleet vying for a podium place on corrected time. Blake, lying second on elapsed time, could only win if UBS suffered breakages and Skip Novak on Drum, who had come second in Uruguay, was within 18 hours of Lion. But with fluky winds up the Brazilian coast, the Doldrums and the full might of the North Atlantic ahead, the race remained anything but a foregone conclusion.

On Drum, the precocious Grant Dalton won the ‘dick of the day’ award for describing himself as a ‘legend in the making’ and the crew enjoyed a hygiene moment when a rain squall offered a chance for a scrub, though Novak’s reference to it focussed on ‘a whole lot of spotty bums’.

The Azores High once again proved decisive. UBS veered east of the Azores and entered a frontal system which hurried them along, while Drum opted to pick up the southerly winds around the back of the High which slowed them down. With just a few days left, they were becalmed and the gap to the leader stretched to an irretrievable 500 nm, which at the finish line in Portsmouth translated into a 40 hour deficit.

They were even overtaken by Cote d’Or who sneaked across the line three and a half hours ahead of the frustrated Drum crew and things took a turn for the worse when Customs Officers, accompanied by sniffer dog, boarded the English boat just minutes after the finish to see whether the rock star had picked up any illegal substances in Uruguay.

Blake arrived soon after to retain second place on elapsed time and the little French boat L’Esprit d’Equipe arrived in eighth place, some four days after UBS, to take the 1985 Whitbread Trophy in front of a huge group of fans who had travelled across the Channel to applaud France’s emphatic victory, their first of the event.