Van der Wal on the wheel during Leg 3 from Auckland to Mar del Plata – back into the south and with no ice gates (not even thought of in 1981) you can cut the corner as much as you want with several boats dipping into the screaming 60s in the early races. In later editions, first there was the Argos system to monitor positions – a saucepan over the aerial was quite effective – and today of course everything is there online and it is near-impossible to hide what you are doing. However, in 1981 it was for the competitors to radio in daily with position and weather; needless to say, when the occasion demanded the SSB radios could become annoyingly unreliable
“We want you to shoot for SAIL Maga- zine during the round-the-world-race.” I said, “Great, let me just check with the boss.” Because I’m the engineer and the bowman, and I’ve already got a lot on my plate, you know? The old man loved the press… so when I told Conny he says, “Perfect – let me know what else you need.” So Onne asked for another camera body and another lens. ‘And then the mag- azine gave me a brick of 64 Kodachrome. So that’s how the photography started.’ That’s also when Conny added ‘official
team photographer’ to Onne’s list of duties, telling him: ‘If you’re driving or grinding or trimming, and it’s phenomenal conditions, hand off to somebody else and you go and shoot. But you’re the only one allowed to do that.’ The other guys could only take pictures
when off-watch; but Onne now had per- mission to prioritise capturing the experi- ence. And so was born the first OBR.
Final prep An unsuccessful attempt at a new trans - atlantic record (Onne blames the naviga- tor, not the boat) provided a chance to test out his new camera gear; another unique perspective for the time was from the end of the spinnaker pole, when he was sent to change out an after-guy or check on chafe. Back in England, he spent the final weeks before the Whitbread start living on
48 SEAHORSE
the boat in Hamble, ‘up the river there… I just loved the pubs at night and so with many of the race sailors staying in the area it was a wonderful time.’ Another near-leer accompanies a few
unprintable memories about pulling some of those mates out of the clutches of the British police, but during the day they were all laser-focused on boat prep. ‘We were just full on, never a day off… always fixing shit and making things.’ The crew roster was also finalised in
that period. ‘We’d gone through quite a few people who the old man didn’t like,’ Onne says. ‘Conny is my hero. He’s like the Dennis Conner of the ocean-racing world. I learned so much from him.’ Though there was some turnover during
the seven-month race he claims only one guy ever got fired. A crystal-clear focus helped to achieve a double victory for Flyer II in the 26,000-mile event, both on corrected time and line honours, to go one better than Conny’s first attempt onboard line-honours winner Flyer I in 1977-1978 when Lionel Péan’s little Briand 56-footer beat him to the handicap prize.
So it begins – Leg 1 Southampton to Cape Town In August 1981 29 boats crossed the start- line off Southampton, UK for the third Whitbread Round the World Race. The fol- lowing spring only 20 would complete the
marathon course: four long legs of flat-out ocean racing, separated by month-long lay- overs in Cape Town, Auckland, and Mar del Plata. Flyer’s first leg included several days of slatting and sweating in the Dol- drums and then 10 days of 25kt on the nose, tacking south down the African coast. ‘Now they go the long way round around
the South Atlantic High towards the Brazil- ian coast,’ Onne reminds me. ‘The boats are so much faster they just keep kites up and go all the way south to run into Cape Town. ‘We went on the other side of the high,
hard on the wind. It’s much shorter, and back then it was the accepted route. And of course the met info then was, shall we say, a little “thinner”. We got one weather report each day from the Met Office. And on a little printer, a single synoptic chart of pressure areas. That’s how we figured out where to go. We’d probably have taken the shorter, African coast route anyway with those boats, which most of the time went only a little faster downwind than up, but heading out west then south around the top of the high without modern weather infor- mation could also have been a big risk.’ Flyer II was first home into Cape Town
and finished third on handicap, the begin- nings of a trend. It was also a fantastic homecoming for Onne. ‘We were heroes. I had a nice girlfriend for a month, and it was very hard to leave.’ Again shoreside memories bring on that boyish grin.
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