Old school


By the age of 12 in the mid-1960s he was on first-name terms with the staff of Helsinki’s largest bookstore where he would buy or sit on the floor and read every sailing magazine he could find. Since then Tapio Lehtinen has sailed around the world fully crewed and alone, rounding Cape Horn on three circumnavigations; he has helped introduce sailing to hundreds of juniors in the country of 180,000 lakes and islands. Last year he completed the Ocean Globe Race 2023 on his classic S&S Swan 55, also with a young crew, many taking their first steps offshore


BORN TO SAIL – THE EARLY YEARS – Eero Lehtinen My elder brother, Tapio, is to blame for our family’s addiction to sailing. As soon as he started to read, sailing boats and yachting legends had become dear to him. Tapio learned the basics along with our late father.


54 SEAHORSE


Early dedication Tapio’s dedication pushed the father and son team forward. Courses were com- pleted and first boats bought. In 1965 Tapio’s dream started to materialise with the family’s first sailing boat, a wooden Optimist at the summer cottage on a small lake in southern Finland. As an 11-year- old Tapio had also assumed a role on the family’s little Nordic Folkboat. Already he had the best understanding of sail trim of any of us, also taking an active role navi- gating the rocky waters of the Finnish archipelago. Sailing days were often long, the boat was slow and so planning the annual four-week cruising holiday was often somewhat ambitious…


Flipper champion Tapio’s deep interest in sailing soon led to success on the racecourse. In 1971 a then 13-year-old Tapio finished fourth at the inaugural ISAF Youth Worlds, held in Sweden. With his sister Elina they domi- nated the Flipper Scow class in Finland, while also ensuring the family’s youngest (yeah, that’s me) got going in his Optimist. Tapio was also actively involved in the


development of the Flipper class, improving layouts and functionality; this opportunity came through our father running a small boatyard where the Flippers were built. By the time he turned 14 a small group of


youngsters would regularly appear at the yard to debate ideas on how to improve the Flipper’s performance. Sailing his own


immaculate Flipper with Elina, he would record each race win with a stripe of tape on the boat’s boom. The boom was full of stripes at the end of the summer, and they went on to win the 1973 Nationals with a clean sweep of six bullets in six races.


Finnish Whitbread pioneer Tapio’s dinghy career came to an end after several years in 470s and Lasers; studies were taking over and financial backing was not sufficient to get on the international circuits. But as compensation he did receive some nice offers to join top Finnish offshore crews in the hot IOR fleet. In 1981-82 at the age of 23 his dream came true, sailing as a watch captain onboard the first ever Finnish Whitbread entry, Skopbank of Finland – a Baltic 51. The pioneers succeeded, and the brave crew wrote Finnish yacht racing his- tory, winning the small boat class on the tough Southern Ocean leg from Cape Town to Auckland, and finishing 12th in the largest Whitbread fleet ever (29 entries). Tapio’s Whitbread experience was fol-


lowed by several shorthanded ocean races, including the Round Britain and the AZAB ’87 and perhaps most notably the Twostar transatlantic race with the late Kai Granholm – another trailblazer in Finnish shorthanded ocean racing.


Classic Six Metre In 1984 Tapio married Pia, a fellow stu- dent from Aalto University, with the young couple spending their honeymoon on their


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