Racing Magellans

The yacht Great Britain II was a week's sail from Capetown when her fresh-water tanks sprang a leak and ran dry. Forced to live on a trickle of water distilled in a pressure cooker, the crew reached Capetown so weak that it took twelve men to lower and stow the big, billowy spinnaker. Between Capetown and Sydney the skipper of a French yawl and a British crewman on an Italian vessel were lost overboard in storms, and a Mexican boat suffered a knockdown. A British sailor drowned east of Sydney when he lost his footing and fell into the frigid ocean.

Those are but a sample of the disasters that have struck a fleet of 17 boats competing in the year's most grueling sporting event--the first round-the-world sailing race. Since they tacked out from Portsmouth, England, last September, the competitors have rounded the Cape of Good Hope, crossed the storm-tossed Indian Ocean to Australia, and completed the dreary, dangerous, downhill passage round Cape Horn to reach Rio de Janeiro. This week they will weigh anchor to begin the final leg to Portsmouth, where the winner* will collect no cash--just a modest silver trophy, some medals and the satisfaction of winning the 27,000-mile endurance test sponsored by Whitbread & Company, Ltd., a British brewery.

When the race began, it shaped up as a battle between two big, custom-built racing machines, the 74-ft. ketch Pen Duick VI from France and the 72-ft. ketch Great Britain II. Both are captained by veteran sailors. Pen Duick Skipper Eric Tabarly won a singlehanded transatlantic race in 1964; Great Britain II's captain, Chay Blyth, made a solo circumnavigation three years ago.

But the sea does not play favorites. Tabarly, a navy commander, was barely halfway to Capetown when his titanium mainmast collapsed. By radio, Tabarly ordered a new spar. Under jury rig, he headed for Rio, 1,200 miles away, to pick it up. The 82-ft. mast, fabricated in Switzerland, had to be cut in two to fit into a French military jet. Meanwhile Blyth, a former paratroop sergeant, was learning that $350,000 worth of sleek boat does not necessarily go fast when manned by a crew of paratroopers with little sailing experience.

The glamour entries were not the only ones in trouble. Beyond the Cape of Good Hope, the "roaring forties" justified their ill repute. Italy's Tauranga lost a crewman to the angry sea, and Dominique Guillet, captain of the French yawl 33 Export, was tossed overboard and lost when his safety harness snapped during a squall. Then came the terrifying moment when heavy seas rolled the Mexican ketch Sayula II so far her masts were deep under water. "There was no warning," recalls Crewman Keith Lorence. "Suddenly there was a big crash and the lights went out. She righted herself in seconds, but she must have rolled at least 160 degrees." Half of the twelve-member crew was injured.

Adventure Training. There were few amenities to relieve the boredom of chasing an empty horizon for 6,000 monotonous miles. Captain Blyth, as if emulating Captain Bligh, kept comforts to a minimum, removing heaters and fans, feeding his crew on army rations, and limiting them to one fresh-water bath every ten days. "If the men get too comfy down below," he insists, "they won't want to come up on deck to work." On some other boats, living has been easier, with quarters outfitted with stereos, soft chairs and well-stocked freezers.

With no boat claiming a monopoly on trouble, Sayula II recovered from her dunking in the Indian Ocean well enough to take the lead going into Rio. She is a production-line Swan-65, skippered by Mexican Millionaire Ramon Carlin. Adventure, a British navy cutter that has changed crew in every port of call to give more sailors "adventure training," is a distant second.

After the last anchor chain has rattled through the hawsepipe in Portsmouth, a question will remain: What has it all proved? That man can sail round the globe has been known since Magellan's time, and that he can do it solo, since Slocum's. The boats now competing cost a fortune, and the race has cost three lives. Having exacted entry fees of .-L-150, Whitbread has at least shown that it can get an ocean of publicity for a pannikin of small change.

*Because the boats vary in design and size and therefore in potential speed, the winner will be the boat with the best corrected rather than elapsed time. Corrected time is computed on a handicap basis, taking into account such factors as the boat's waterline length and sail area.

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