In 1971, for example, I set a course record for Fastnet but still didn’t win first prize. A smaller boat that finished after me was declared the winner after the handicap was added to my time. The start of the race was also staggered. Yachts were sent off over the course of an hour in six divisions at ten-minute intervals. These groupings were determined by boat length, with the larger boats placed in the rear and smaller ones in front. At sixty-one feet,
Tenacious
was toward the larger end of the scale. Our boat size would not only help us move quickly through the water, it would also give us an advantage should the conditions turn rough. At the start—1:30
P.M.
on Saturday, August 11—the weather was fine, and while the long-range forecast called for some wind and possibly rain, conditions were not a concern.
As with all ocean races, we split into two watches, each one managing the boat for four hours at a time. Gary Jobson and I had been by each other’s side in the America’s Cup, but here he served as captain of one of our watches, while another good friend and experienced seaman named Jim Mattingly served as the other. We collaborated on tactical decisions as we took turns steering the boat. Because of the handicap system and the extended length of the course it’s impossible to know precisely where you stand in an event like this, but forty-eight hours into the race, as we moved closer to Fastnet Rock, we knew we were doing well. The crew was working together and Jane Potts kept everyone happily fed. I was eager to break my course record and win the race, and halfway through the contest I thought we had a chance to do both.
Peter Bowker was our navigator and part of his job was to retrieve and interpret the weather updates we received over the radio. About the time that we were turning Fastnet Rock, Bowker relayed a report that a low pressure system was coming in from the North Atlantic and a major storm would hit us sometime that night. They were calling for Force 7 or 8 winds, possibly reaching Force 9 in some locations—hurricane conditions. In addition to considering what this meant for
Tenacious
and trying to prepare myself mentally for the storm, I couldn’t help but think about the fact that there were more than three hundred boats in this race and some of them were far too small for a storm of this magnitude. While I felt we’d be all right, I predicted to my crew that twenty men would die that night.
Conditions were still moderate when we rounded the rock around 6:30 on Monday evening, but as night fell we could feel the wind building and the seas starting to rise. I told the crew to eat dinner and get their rest, as we were in for a long, tough night. Winds of the sort they were predicting are always dangerous, but in this body of water they would be particularly devastating. The Atlantic Ocean can reach depths of thousands of feet but in the Irish Sea, where we were racing, it shoals to just a couple of hundred feet. Shallow water causes waves to build up steeper and deeper. With proper sail management, you can usually handle the wind—it’s the steep waves that pose most of the problems. There was no doubt that the weather was deteriorating by 8:00
P.M.
when I handed the wheel over to Gary Jobson for the next four-hour watch. He did a great job during that stretch while I stayed below and tried to get as much rest as possible. I knew the situation could be very different by midnight when it would be time to change watches again.
A TED STORY
“His Finest Moment”
—Gary Jobson
Ted had the watch from 12:00
A.M.
to
4:00 A.M.
and that was the absolute worst of the storm. I kept popping up from belowdecks to see what I could do to help and he kept telling me to get back down and get some rest. That was the way he liked to sail—he wanted the helmsman who was not on watch to take it easy because when it came time to take the wheel he had to be mentally sharp. But that night was never restful—it was hell down below. It was cold and wet—we were thrown all over the place and everybody was getting sick.
At one point, when the wind got really hard—like 60 knots—we had to get the mainsail down and Ted did let me come up and help with that. It was quite a feat of seamanship for us to get that sail wrestled, corralled, and tied down. With the mainsail down the sailing got a little easier. We used a small storm trysail—a triangular storm sail—and that worked well. During those four hours down below, Bowker was monitoring the radio. We heard Mayday calls all night—it was just bedlam on the radio—and we saw flares going off in the distance.
I came back up at 4:00
A.M.
and Ted went below, completely exhausted. Handing the wheel over he said, “Don’t let anybody else steer! You’re the only helmsman!” On this next shift the winds started to die down, probably to about 50 knots, but the waves were still gigantic. In a storm like that, the wind makes you weary and the spray hurts when it hits you, but what separated Fastnet from anything else I’ve ever experienced were the short, steep waves. I can still remember these big thirty-five-footers breaking over my head and crashing into the cockpit and thinking, “How am I ever going to be able to describe this to anybody? How is anybody ever going to understand what this is all about?”
Ted was really tough that night. I was watching him and he was so strong that I didn’t get frightened. I thought, “If he’s all right, then things must be okay.” The harder it got, the better he was. I think it was his finest moment.
Conditions were really rough during that midnight to 4:00
A.M.
watch. After the race, some people said the waves were as high as forty feet. I’m not sure I ever saw any that high but I’d say they were averaging eighteen to twenty feet and some were probably thirty or thirty-five. The wind was blowing so hard that the top six to ten feet of some of these were breaking as if they were coming up on a beach. The watch crew clipped on their safety harnesses that were attached to a side rail where they would all huddle together. When the waves broke on us they were all but submerged. Despite the fact that
Tenacious
weighed about seventy thousand pounds, she was still thrown about twenty to thirty feet to leeward when the bigger waves hit. A couple of times we were knocked almost flat, but I had great confidence in the strength and integrity of our boat. (That doesn’t mean something couldn’t have broken. In fact,
Tenacious
was made of aluminum, with plates welded over aluminum ribs, and after the race we saw that several plates had broken and the front of the boat had to be rewelded.)
Visibility was poor. Not only were we sailing in the dark but the howling wind and rain made it hard to keep your eyes open, and down in the trough of one of these waves, the view ahead was nothing but black. During these early morning hours, the bigger boats had also made the turn and were sailing ahead of us, but most of the smaller boats were still making their way out to Fastnet Rock and that presented a challenge. When we rode up to the top of a wave we could briefly make out the red and green bow lights of oncoming boats and we had to make a split decision about which way to turn the wheel to avoid a collision. I knew that if we ever collided it would be a disaster. I don’t think we ever came closer than two hundred feet or so to an oncoming boat, but with the limited visibility, it was quite a challenge.
As the storm made the sailing increasingly difficult, precise navigation had become impossible. Fastnet rules banned the use of some of the more advanced navigation technologies so the best we were allowed was a radio direction finder or RDF—a handheld device that uses radio signals to gauge the boat’s location. Peter Bowker was responsible for using our RDF, and at one point, just as he stepped forward on the deck to try to get a reading, a breaking wave sent him flying toward the stern. He crashed so hard against the metal steering wheel that he bent it, and in the process the RDF was broken.
It was really scary that night, but as dangerous as things became for us, I refused to get too worried. If I had, I might have slowed up—there were eighteen other people aboard and as their skipper I had responsibility—but I felt that our boat was strong enough and I continued to press on. Even at the height of the storm, I was more concerned about winning than I was about dying.
By the time Jobson’s watch finished at 8:00
A.M.
, the storm was starting to settle down. He’d had the job of steering us around the Scilly Isles, the final turn before heading back into the Channel and on toward the finish line at Plymouth. In good conditions, you try to make the turn as close to the Scillies as you can. With low visibility and lacking electronic navigation, we took a conservative approach and made a wide pass of the Scillies. We never saw the islands. I was disappointed by how far away we were from them—probably about ten miles and rounding wide cost us some time—but it was the safe thing to do.
By the end of that shift, around 8:00
A.M.
, the storm was pretty much over and we were able to get the mainsail back up. The rest of the race was uneventful and we crossed the finish line to Plymouth at about 10:30 on Tuesday night. Relieved to have successfully completed the course, we were hopeful that we’d sailed well enough to win. In contrast, most of the spectators were simply concerned about whether their friends or loved ones had survived. Rescue teams were being dispatched and it became clear that the night had been nearly as disastrous as I had predicted. In the end, nineteen people lost their lives that night—fifteen racers and four people from the crew of a pace boat. During the overnight chaos, all kinds of rumors were being spread, including one that
Tenacious
was among the boats that were missing. It turned out that when some of the rescue helicopters flew over the fleet, they didn’t see our boat. They assumed the worst, and we were farther ahead than they realized and they didn’t see us because they underestimated our speed.
A TED STORY
“Do Not Panic or You Will Die”
—Teddy Turner
Under the worst conditions, ocean racing can become a game of survival and the tougher the game is the more Dad likes it. One of the lessons he taught me is that in these situations, “You are in control of your own situation until you give up. Do not panic or you will die.” And that night, he never gave up. I was watching my dad, not just because he was my father, but also because he was the skipper and it made a big impact on me to watch him not be scared.
We didn’t know really how bad things had been for everyone else until early in the morning after the storm. We were having breakfast and listening to the radio—just a regular commercial station on the stereo—and they started talking about the tragedy of the night before. Everybody got very somber when we pulled into Portsmouth for the finish. The docks were crowded with thousands of people with pictures of their kids and their family since a lot of people knew that their child, husband, or family member was out there but they didn’t necessarily know which boat they were on. They’d come up to you and say, “Have you seen this person?” Then the Coast Guard cutter came in and started unloading bodies. Needless to say, this was all pretty daunting for a sixteen-year-old.
When I woke up Wednesday morning, I was told that
Tenacious
had finished in second place. As had been the case in 1971, the winner was a smaller boat that came in far behind us but was declared the winner after handicap hours were added to our time. I was very disappointed. Meanwhile, because of the storm and the loss of life, Fastnet had become an international news story. As one of the race’s well known competitors, many in the press wanted to talk to me. I did a live television interview with David Hartman on
Good Morning America
and spoke to other journalists from around the world.
During these interviews, I expressed disappointment with our second place finish and when asked about the disaster I explained my feelings that there were several smaller boats in the race that had no business being out there. They were too small to be on a course where storms like this can happen. Bad weather was part of the sport, I explained, and competitors need to be prepared. A couple of times I even commented that the British should be thankful for weather like this, explaining that it was a storm like this one in these very waters that helped keep the Spanish Armada from invading England in the sixteenth century. “If it weren’t for this kind of weather,” I explained to the British press, “you’d all be speaking Spanish!”
Looking back, I can see why I offended some people. From their perspective, a terrible tragedy had just occurred and they were expecting my tone to be more somber and subdued. From my perspective, my crew and I had just survived an epic race through terrible conditions. I’d barely had time to process everything that had happened and I was merely speaking my mind. These storms happen and sailors who enter these races should be prepared for them.
I was also frustrated that one of the smaller boats had managed to beat us on an adjusted time and I was preparing to go home when I was told that the judges had made a correction. The skipper of the smaller boat reported that they had never made it to Fastnet Rock—when they crossed the finish line at Plymouth, they hadn’t even completed the course.
Tenacious
was now declared the winner! Because of the storm, this was not the same kind of celebratory situation we had at the Newport docks two years earlier, but this was a race I had always wanted to win and we had done it in the worst conditions imaginable.
Some good did come from the Fastnet tragedy. Several studies were conducted and papers written, resulting in new safety standards for the sport. While there have been fatalities in ocean races since then, including six deaths in the 1998 Sydney–Hobart race, yachting is a safer sport than it was prior to Fastnet, and I believe that my frank post-race comments helped stimulate some of the attention on eliminating unsafe boats from these competitions.
I would later learn that during the time when rumors spread that I was missing, CNN’s newly signed anchor Daniel Schorr was making an appearance on our behalf at a cable trade show. The story of my possible demise was all over but people had no source for accurate updates as events unfolded. Eventually, word got out that I was okay, and when it did, Schorr turned the entire event to our advantage. He explained that when CNN was up and running as the first-ever twenty-four-hour news service, the Fastnet Race was precisely the kind of story we would cover. I liked Dan’s style and I was eager to get back to Atlanta to keep our launch plans moving forward full steam ahead.