Sailing: Tudor plans ahead
THE skipper of British Steel II, Richard Tudor, says he has planned everything, down to the form of service he would use for a burial at sea, writes Stuart Alexander from the Solent. He has put his crew of fare-paying amateurs under as much pressure as he can during seven months of training.
Yesterday here he took one of 10 identical, British designed and built 67ft steel sailing cruisers across the start line of the British Steel Challenge.
It was Pride of Teesside, skippered out of his own home waters by Ian MacGillivray, which led the fleet after the start at Gilkicker, just west of Portsmouth.
As an over-eager Will Sutherland in Commercial Union and Mike Golding in Group 4 Securitas incurred time penalties for jumping the gun and Adrian Donovan's Heath Insured hit the inner end of the start-line, all will face time penalties.
An armada of spectators flanked the yachts as Pride of Teesside picked up two prizes of pounds 2,000 for being first round the first two buoys with John Chittenden in Nuclear Electric pounds 1,000 behind by being second at each. The weather gods co-operated splendidly with sunshine and a following wind to give the sponsors' spinnakers an airing right down the Solent and out past the Needles.
Ahead of them are 28,000 miles of circumnavigation, going the hard way, against the prevailing winds and currents. The probability of the toughest and most testing times lies in the southern ocean above Antarctica as they battle round Cape Horn on the second leg from Rio to Hobart, Tasmania, and in the Roaring Forties of southern Indian Ocean on the third leg to Cape Town.
For many of the crew of 13 on each yacht, who have made huge sacrifices, paying pounds 14,800 for a berth all the way round, just to complete the course will be enough.
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