Printable version  News feed

The phone call to Smith’s Lymington home was an offer to take over as skipper on Swedish W60 Intrum Justitia after Roger Nilsson sustained an injury. He was on a plane in a flash, desperate to restore his reputation and resume his place as title contender.

Others were not so keen to head out into the Southern Ocean and one crewmember on the maxi Uruguay Natural jumped off the boat and into the sea just minutes before the start. Many wished they had done the same as the very worst of the ocean’s demons turned the second leg into a grim and terrifying experience, huge seas and freezing cold, plus icebergs the size of shopping malls, serving to keep the adrenalin pumping 24/7.

“Little can compare for dramatic sailing with surfing down huge walls of water under full sail past a magnificent luminescent iceberg,” chirruped Glen Sowry on New Zealand Endeavour.

First to suffer was US Women’s Challenge, the W60 skippered by Dawn Riley. The clew of their spinnaker was wrenched out, forcing them into a Chinese gybe which saw the mainsail spilt into two. It took more than two days to repair and the weather, in the form of a violent snowstorm, did not help.

On New Zealand Endeavour Dalton was chancing his arm by flying his full-size spinnaker and the mizzen gennaker in 35 knots of wind. His lead over the next boat Intrum Justitia was 65 nm, but this blinding pace could not be sustained.

“David Brooke had just been hoisted to the top of the rig to lock the halyard off when a particularly tricky wave caught the stern and threw the boat into a broach. Burt had a rough ride up the main mast as the boat thrashed on her side before she regained her footing.

“In an effort to get the boat back on her feet, the mizzen gennaker halyard was released to enable the gennaker to be pulled back on board. One wave was all it took to snatch the gennaker out of the crew’s hands and trawl it astern. The sudden load on the mizzen mast, generated by the gennaker, was enough to snap the mast off at the third spreader. It was a shell-shocked and depressed crew that cleaned up the expensive lump of scrap metal crashing around the air,” Sowry wrote later in Yachting World.

Severely underpowered, they carried on and their strop only subsided when they heard a distress signal coming off the Italian W60 Brooksfield, who were bailing out water after their rudder shaft was ripped out in a gale, leaving a large hole in the hull. There was water everywhere, which wiped out their communications system and for hours, Race HQ, who launched a major rescue operation, were unable to make contact.

Winston and Intrum stopped racing and headed to the Italians aid but it was La Poste, the French maxi who reached Brooksfield first 12 hours after the first SOS. She stood by in case the boat sank and waited for two US Navy ships to come and escort her to port. Everyone carried on, but an almighty fuss kicked off later over the time compensation for her rescuers.

Smith headed south, straight for the icebergs, in the hope of picking up winds and once again it paid dividends. In one day, Intrum set a new record, logging over 425 nm, sailing at an average of 17.75, speeds that Smith later said could be bettered, given the right conditions.

On Dolphin & Youth, the young guns W60, the rudder broke, but they lashed it back on and continued. On Spanish W60 Galicia there were delamination problems and Winston too was found to be suffering with the same thing.

But it was Smith on Intrum who crossed the Fremantle finish line first, establishing the W60 as a true thoroughbred, capable of standing up to the roughest conditions and what’s more, capable of some truly extraordinary speeds. The fatigue suffered by crews had also reached new levels, but that merely served to accentuate the importance of fitness both in the remainder of the race and subsequent events.