Whitbread

1977 Whitbread Race. Condor Condor surfing in the Southern Ocean Teamed up with Les Williams to jointly skipper this maxi yacht in the Whitbread Race with Peter Blake as Mate. Les skippered Legs 1 and 3, (Portsmouth to Cape Town and Auckland to Rio de Janeiro) RKJ Legs 2 and 4 (Cape Town to Auckland and Rio to Portsmouth. The carbon mast failure in the first leg meant that a handicap win under the IOR was not a possibility, but line honours were taken in Legs 2 and 4. On the 2nd Leg Condor came in ahead of Great Britain 2 by more than a day and these two boats were joined by Eric Tarbaly’s Pen Duik for the last two legs. Pen Duik had got 100 miles ahead in the north-east trades, but a high pressure system was approaching the Azores. RKJ went north-west, 120 degrees from the rhumb line to the finish, to get west of the predicted position of the high when Condor might have reached the Azores. For a couple of days the winds were very light, but as the high moved eastwards, the wind slowly came in from the west, and although she sailed twice the distance of Pen Duik, she went more than twice as fast and beat her into Portsmouth by 4 hours. Book “Last but not least” Robertsbridge.