The Tim Heale Podcasts S3 E16 Peter Wykeham-Martin

In this episode Peter tell of the first Whitbread Round the World Race and his part in it and his journey to get there.

Transcript

0 (1s):
The Tim Heale podcasts, ordinary people's extraordinary stories. <inaudible>

1 (16s):
To series three of the Tim Heale podcasts in the last two series. I've told you about my life. I've met many interesting people along the way who have become my friends and what they all have in common is they all have fascinating stories of their own, which they're happy to share with you now. Thanks.

0 (36s):
Thank you for listening.

1 (40s):
Welcome to this episode of the Tim Heale podcast. In this episode, I'm interviewing Peter. Peter took part in a Whitbread round the world race, and Peter's going to tell us all about that, but first Peter, if you can tell us where and where you're born, and if you can describe what it was like, where you grew up, the types of education and the schools that you went to over to you, Peter,

2 (1m 9s):
Good morning, Tim. I was born in Porchester, which is at the top end of Portsmouth Harbor. And in fact, literally very close to the castle. And from my very early days, I was basically, my life had revolved around the sailing club. I started sailing in dinkies down there when I was six or seven. My first solo trip was actually in a little dingy on the Norfolk broads, where I learned the difference between jiving and tacking. Because every time I jive, when my dad told me to attack, I managed to fill the thing up, but I learned that one. So I learned that lesson. We kept it all my life. So then I went to school in, first of all, in Fareham at a place called <inaudible>, which is now closed.

2 (1m 51s):
And then to pause with grammar school all this time, I was Kering in dinghies at the same club, ours screwing in enterprises and five Oh five. And by the time I was about 11, I was siting a thing called a porches to duck, which was built by a lovely old man called commander, bill Hammond in Porchester and a kinkier built boats, 13 foot long, big guns, a rig sail, but it was very, very stable. And I settled all around force was harmed during that, by myself and up around the top end of horsey Island, which is now important Solon.

2 (2m 32s):
And it was a wonderful way of just getting to know boats and just enjoy myself. And I had a major, you have one as well, and we used to just sail around the whole time, right? Racing out of Porchester in those days, it was really a lot of fun. We used to race spelling, petty casual sort of races, but we raced up bullshitter Creek and into the Harbor. But I'll turning Mark is the Vanguard, which is more on the trots at the top of Bush to Creek. So it was one of the nice to find it. Your was Mark was go round the battleship Vanguard. Not many people can say they had that as a turning Mark. When I then got to 13 or 14, I wants to have my own racing dingy. And I had a cherub, which is a 12 foot Zeeland design boat carries far too much sail.

2 (3m 20s):
A lot of fun with that. We even went to cows week cause they used to have a cow's dinghy week at the same time as cars, Rick then, which was exciting because they were saying a 12 foot dingy amongst all the big class, one yachts having gone on with that. I was then by that stage away at boarding school. So finding a crew was also becoming quite difficult when you're back in the holidays. You'd miss basically half the sailing season. So I then sold the cherub and boards a single-handed thing. You call the okay, with a bendy mast a bit like a smaller, slightly smaller fin, a lot of funds a sale. If you capsize the thing floated very high.

2 (4m 1s):
So it was quite difficult to get it back up again, but you really did learn quite a lot about single agitating in that. And then I then went off to join the Royal Navy at the age of 17 when I left school, basically, cause I thought I was basically too thick to go to university and I didn't really want to go to university. Anyway, I was fed up with school and so I joined the Royal Navy and I went down to Dartmouth. And the first thing I found was that actually I was expected to go on the river and sell as much as I could, but I mean, I thought this was brilliant and I was being paid for it as well. I mean, you can't get much better than that. And so that's what I did. And I then spent a lot of time down in the river so much.

2 (4m 42s):
So I got actually taken to one side by my division officer who told me that you were meant to do so many hours in powerboats and so many hours in yachts. And so far I got exactly the bare minimum and powerboats and I had about $3,000 in yachts and he said, you've got to do something else. But I, by that stage was also looking after the divisional yacht. So a 43 foot Morgan Giles boats. And that was, you know, really like having your own yacht. Great fun. I'll take you. It didn't have any problem getting crew for that. Well, now at that stage, it was in my mates were other cadets. But then when I went to sea as a midshipman and then came back to Dartmouth for my third year, I was actually running the, the, the divisional yacht.

2 (5m 29s):
And I used to take there wasn't sort of tenant. And I used to take crews, the cadets away in the boat and we did races up and down the Devon coast organized by the college. And we took the boat to cows week, which is the first time at Dharma sell training. Got I've been at Calgary for a long time, but they insisted that we took the facility. Commander is a divisional officer along with us to take charge of us. So what we used to do was just tell him to sit at the back, shut, not say anything and let us get on and race the yacht. And he was very good to be fair to him. He did exactly that.

1 (6m 3s):
So what year was that then Peter,

2 (6m 5s):
That was racing in, that was in 1969 at cows Creek. I then went off at the end of that cows week in the college racing yacht, which was a Nicholson 36 called Tamara. And I did my first facet race, which was quite an experience because we ended up the, the wind dropped off. Totally. It took us, I think over seven and a half days. And our skipper, it was a chain smoking lecturer at the college. And I won't mention his name, but he ran out of cigarettes after five days. So you can imagine when he's was like, by the time we finished, but that was my first fast race. And I just did another three later on.

1 (6m 45s):
What, what was your career like in a Royal Navy once you'd left Dartmouth? Were you able to continue your sailing or

2 (6m 53s):
Yeah. Yeah. So it was, I mean, I, I think I've, I was extraordinarily lucky. I think it was a simple way of putting it. I was because I'm slightly short-sighted those days the rules were such, I couldn't become a seaman officer. So I became a supply officer. I had no idea what that meant. That's I wanted to join the Navy. That was all I was interested in doing. And so I joined, joined up as a supply house and I found it often gave me time to go off and do a lot of sailing. And I, I mean, when I left the Royal Navy, after 34 years, I was dying down to somebody we've had saying as a job in the Royal Navy, as a hobby, not a bad way of looking at it.

1 (7m 33s):
So did you actually ever go to save

2 (7m 36s):
Or, Oh, yes. Yeah. Don't, don't worry. I wouldn't see. I was, I had a super time as a midshipman. I was in a Minesweeper based in Malta for nine months and we, we actually lived a short in flats in Boulder and that was a small ship. You learned a lot only ships come to you of any 32. You learned a hell of a lot about silos and life at sea in the Navy. I then would often I did a job up in Norway with the wrong Marines for three months and yards in the winter on a single clockwork for the helicopter squadrons. And I then had other jobs as a deputy supply officer of a guided missile destroyer.

2 (8m 21s):
I was supplied sort of forgets and I was a supplier of, so as a commander of Homs Intrepid, the assault ship. So, you know, I, I have pinch of sea time, but I was still managed to get him to my sailing. That's good.

1 (8m 34s):
You left the Royal Navy then or did you do the, the Whitbread before that?

2 (8m 40s):
No, no, no, no. I did to get a bit bread, but I was in the Navy a little bit of history in a way, but what happened was in 1969, yachting journalist called Anthony Churchill who organized a single-handed transatlantic race, sort of the idea of a race around the world, following the traditional tipper routes, lots of organizations, but funding was clearly going to be a big issue. And sponsorship was still very much in its infancy, but the RN wants the race to go ahead is they decided to use the race as the launch of a new fleet of sail training yachts, which people were remember down at Hornet, the Nicholas and 50 fives Whitbread brewery had expressed interest to the Navy in sponsoring race and so rinse.

2 (9m 25s):
And the Whitbread took the concept on in July 72 and announced that the fast, first race rather would start on the 8th of September, 1973. Adventure was the first Nick 55 designed for the services. And she was actually slightly strengthened because she was going to do the race has a slightly stronger Holland beefy up mask, but that was the plan. And so what the Navy did was it said, right, we're going to do this. It was knows days. It was only four legs. So it was this leg from port some down to Cape town, Cape town, to Sydney, Sydney, to Rio Rio back home. And the Navy justified basically entering a boating race by saying that they would have four crews, different crew, each leg, but that would give them a core of people at the end, who could then start running.

2 (10m 17s):
What is now the joint services, sailors training association. What they did was they said anyone who wants to try to enter this race, any volunteer could have a go. And they had over 300 volunteers. I was lucky to very early on, I was basically picked up and started joining the crews, actually running or doing the selecting. It was an interesting process. We had one, a memorable trip because these selection trips you'd go out in the Atlantic, bang out in the Atlantic for three or four days. Sometimes round when the weather ships was out there and back in again all in a week.

2 (10m 58s):
And this was in their mind in February or March, and it could be pretty bloody nasty, cold, wet, miserable, and one ship. I remember we had two cooks from a ship that was in refit who thought this would be a wizard week let's volunteer to do this, gets us away from a shipping refit. And they didn't understand what earth they let themselves in for. And basically they spent the whole selection trip in their pits. And at the end of it stepped off the boat and say, here all bloody mad, never wants to see a boat again, but it was interesting selection process because what happened was when you joined for your selection trip, you were given a questionnaire and that questionnaire said, tell us how good you are at, what, what do you like it sail drills.

2 (11m 45s):
What do you like at steering down wind at night? What do you like at this? What do you like it that can you trim sails? And you gave yourself a score. And at the end of the selection trip, they gave you back your questionnaire and said, okay, having had this week away, do you want to remark it? Having seen what happened in the last week? And it was an interesting process because people realize that some of their strengths, some of their weaknesses we had, I mean, one trip. I remember we had a lovely guy who sells thousands of miles came along and we were coming back in Pasa cities at night, in, in quite a strong southwesterly. And we had the Spinnaker up and we were pining along.

2 (12m 25s):
And I went down below at about, I don't know, 1800 ish or something when it was a bit dark and wet and everything else went down below. And after about an hour, things suddenly all got much, much quieter, poked her head up. So we'll skip it, poked his head up through the hatch to see this guy had reduced sale. He said, what are you doing? He said, I always reduced cell at night. Well, you know that maybe what you do when you're cruising long distance, but not when you're racing. And he just said at the end of the week, he said, great idea. I loved it, but I don't want to do it because actually this is not how I sail. I sell in the cruising mode, not in a racing mode. So it was, it was a fascinating process. We will beginning by this stage in, let's say April, April, may beginning to get people coming together.

2 (13m 12s):
We, the select, the skippers have been selected and then were they're beginning to pull together. Their crews, individual crews went off and did child sales. And there was obviously some shuffling of people. Some people didn't get on because compatibility was obviously going to be vital because there were 10 of us in the crew in a fairly small yacht. And you had to watch you all get on with each other. We, once I went off at one stage of the other cruise, I went off as an observer because one of their crew had dropped out at the last minute. So I went off to observe how to getting on. And I found it was fascinating to, to watch from a side, if you like, how people were getting to jail together, but the Naval system worked well.

2 (13m 54s):
What they'd also done was they said that the army had entered a yacht British soldier, which is the old Che blinds, but you're still boats in the race, but the air force did not have a yacht. And so the Navy said that they would take an air force guy per leg if they were up to standard. And we had, we had an actually an air force guy in our leg. So it was, but the crew, the crews would be really beginning to work well together. What we then did was we went off and bear in mind is now some of 1973 for Lee one, which is always in, in the crew for leg one Cape town. We went off to do the 1973 first race in adventure. The first time she'd really raised seriously in anger.

2 (14m 36s):
It was a very good way of actually getting us shaking down. We were used to sailing together for days anyway, but not necessarily in full race mode. And we actually had a great race. We won the cup for the first services, which was a good omen. It gave rise to an interesting incident where just before the start of the facet race, we had one of the flag officers who took a great interest in us, wants to come on board and see how we all got on. So he came down, we took him out for day sailing in the silent and being good guys. We gave him the crew rig. So he had the crew polo shirt on and I was the Bauman. And we went off, we went piling down to Solon under Spinnaker, and we were just about to jibe.

2 (15m 20s):
And in those days, remember it was a twin pole jive, which is quite a, quite an evolution. And it didn't really quite go, right? So I let rip it, the guy on the guy winch and said for Christ's sake or something along those lines, you know, and get yourself sorted out. That's not how we do it. And the skipper was looking at me from behind the wheel, just stipulating, furiously. And at that point, the guy on the winch turned round and it was, you have more, and I'd given him a mouth full of four letter words. And he looked at me and I said, Oh, I'm very sorry, sir. And he said, nobody's spoken to me like that since I was a midshipman. And I got away with it having, having been done the first race, we then really now getting ready, bear in mind that the start of the race was beginning September.

2 (16m 7s):
We were doing a lot of, a lot of trials, a lot of evolutions and checking things. And in particular things, for example, like man overboard, we used to do a crush stop, man overboard under Spinnaker. And we'd be back to pick somebody up in less than four minutes having piled down, wind under Spinnaker. And we did all this because we had a super guy who was our sort of coach. If you like a chief of the obstacle, Roy Melinda, who was a famous name and registered at that time. And Roy used to pitch up on board wearing what you'd now, call it a basically an exposure suit. And he would wearing full, full safety gear and everything else.

2 (16m 49s):
And you'd be sailing along and suddenly he just stepped off the boat. And just before the start of the race, we were out, down towards Bembridge ledge. And as we were pining down wind, it was blowing quite hard. Roy stepped off the back. And so we went into full man overboard drill with the Spinnaker up and we had a jam on the palliate. And of course in, in normal times you'd cut the habit. But Lindsey we went to can do is damage any gear at this stage. So we sorted ourselves out when you, where Roy was and we sorted everything out. And we came back to him, it took us quite a time. And when we got back to him, he said, he thought he perhaps being rather nasty to us during the day because he'd watched the master dip below the horizon and there wasn't a boat in sight.

2 (17m 31s):
So we had an interesting time. So this was like a full on draft. And rather than just taking it out in your spare time. Yeah, I mean, I was basically once I was selected for this, for the system, I, I don't think I've put on a uniform or anything for over a year. All I was doing was just working with adventure down, down at Hornet. Cause that's where she was based with old yoga, pneumonia bridge. In fact, it was one classic day when the person had been captured at Dartmouth when I was just talking to tenants and they told me I would just start doing a little less sailing. He was by that stage a second sea Lord. And he came down with a bunch of VIP's and I was told, get the boat ready for the second Sealord.

2 (18m 11s):
So it looks smart. And he was actually out of the board up on the hard standing. So I was just washing off underneath, and we had nice white Angie Valley just hosing it down. And so she looked nice and smart, and I was just wearing a pair of tatty, old shorts. I was Kate and Angie fouling. And I heard this voice behind me saying, Oh, but the Martin found your niche.

1 (18m 30s):
Maybe it lost. So yeah, that was my draft. Excellent. And you got paid to do it? Well, I think so.

2 (18m 37s):
Really then we got to the stage where just building up money for the crew for the start of the race, the start of the race is in those days, Gunwale was an installation it's Vernon. So all the yachts gathered in each of us Vernon and amongst the other things that came down to us was the Whitbread brewery. Dre pulled by full cart horses, loaded up with cases of beer. And to give you some idea, we then the boat got even lower in the water because we loaded cases of beer on board. I mean, some boats took on thousands. Literally one boat had a thousand cases of beer on board. I won't mention the name, but they didn't do terribly well. 12 o'clock on Saturday, the 8th of September, 1973, we were, we were the first boat away of fleet of 17 boats.

2 (19m 20s):
The largest boat was 80 foot and the smallest was 45.

1 (19m 23s):
So this is back in the day when they still had to run rationale,

2 (19m 27s):
They didn't have their own magnetic gone by then. That that were 1970. But no, we, we, we only took on board enough beer. I think I'm right in saying we had one kind of, there was a small cancer lung, a small cans of beer a day. And we took on board about a half dozen bottles of wine for special occasions. One of which was crossing the line on a crossing the equation on the way down. But of course it was very simple. It was report Smith by any route to see what to Cape town leaving Bembridge ledge boy to star, but distance 6,650 miles. So it was a pretty simple thing. Now I was actually the Bauman, but I was also the navigator, which again was an interesting split of tasks, but you've got to bear in mind in those days that the navigation we had to do and to use sextant because there is no GPS.

2 (20m 19s):
And we had to use, I had to make up our own weather charts because there were no weather grids or weather files or anything else, no internet. What we used to do was listen to the broadcast, which were broadcast. Importers had radio produced by merchant ships, as they went all around the world used to say, send back to Portishead a report that said, I'm here. This is my Latin law. This is a pressure barometric pressure. I've got importers, have a great group that start all together. They would then retransmit it in areas. So, you know, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, and this was transmitted in Moss at 22 words a minute. And there was just literally a bunch of numbers. Two of us basically were told to go away and learn to read more.

2 (21m 2s):
So at that speed, which we did, we also cheated because he used to used to record it on an old cassette recorder. And if you thought you missed the number, you just put your thumb on the, the cassette recorders fully slowed it up a bit and they were, but I then made up our own weather charts because the, the key thing was not so much, obviously the weather in the North Atlantic, which was much more predictable, but down in the South Atlantic, it was where the South Atlantic high was. And I'll get onto the enact a minute. But that was, that was very important. You had to know where that high pressure system was to be able to sail around it. Just a little bit about how we lived on board. We did what is the traditional joint services, cruise spit.

2 (21m 43s):
And we had a mother watch. We had three watches. The skipper didn't do watch obviously, but three watches a three. And we worked the standard neighbor watches for us on four us off the two watches. And the third watch was known as a mother watch. And so you did two days of watch keeping. And then your third day you were mother watch, but then what mother watch for the people you called out for all sail changes and they cooked all the meals, get the boat clean is a, is it, they will crew. We were determined it live in fairly clean conditions. And the great thing about being mother watch was it, it was possible. You might actually get a good, really good night's sleep. So it meant that we were all actually properly rested and properly able to do our job. Other little things about living on board, of course, fresh water was a problem.

2 (22m 26s):
There were no reverse osmosis plants in those days. And we basically carried enough fresh water to have four and a half gallons a day for all purposes, but we had a salt water tap and we use so most of the cooking and washing up and the mother watch would pump four and a half gallons of fresh water up into a container. And that was it for the day. But any left at the end of the day is for them to use. We had the early versions of baby wipes to try and keep ourselves clean. And whenever it rained, it was all hands on deck to shower, which we had been plastic during a trial trip. We encountered rain just as Cunard liner appeared also cause to give the passengers a good look at a yacht, screaming down, wind under full sail, but we didn't tell her three naked guys washing down the foredeck.

2 (23m 8s):
What was that? The ACU headline repaired study behind the spinach with great Hutus or sirens waving from the ship. Settling down into sailing was quite easy because as I said, we'd done all this training and we beat down the channel. And then after nine days, we were into strong northwesterly, Tradewinds the Tradewinds presented their own problems, which we had to tackle because under Spinnaker and going fast, those of you who know the Nicholson 55, no, it has a very fine bow and it has a tendency to actually it has, it has very little buoyancy up for, it has a tendency to submarine. If you get too much weight up forward as a Bauman, I was the only one for the mass. And when we're doing things like jiving and everything else, because otherwise, literally the bowel just vanished under water, but this was very hard sailing in the trades.

2 (23m 54s):
It was, it was fast. It was furious. And we had big thing we had to contend with was chafe because all the lines, of course, you know, the boat was surging. So we spent the whole time having to ease halyards. We had to hire John snubbers. We would send somebody up in the mask once a day because we had to Spinnaker halyards to change the Spinnaker. Halyard over at the top of the mast onto the Spinnaker and just check it, bring it down and check it out. It was really was quite hard work. I mean, my, my log book one day said, we seem to be up all day and night playing Spinnaker's. I mean, one night I was actually on the wheel when we're surfing under Spinnaker and it was a hell of a bang and no Spinnaker is the shackle in Ohio, which in fact had parted under strain.

2 (24m 39s):
And we had a panic button by the wheel, which sounded a klaxon and that meant all hands on deck. Now it was obviously there for things like Manoverboard as well. In this case, it was also to avert major damage. The boats in sales, we recovered what was left of the Spinnaker. Luckily there was serious damage posted another and surfed on how many sales did you actually carry on board then we can. I think it was for Spinnaker's. We had a heavy weather one, which was a 2.2 ounce storm Spinnaker, which really was Bulletproof at 1.5, a 0.75, and a 0.5. Actually we had, we had five cause we also carried in those days, used to be a thing called a star cuts. Some people may remember, which was a reaching Spinnaker, which is a really fantastic sale for those Nick 50 fives.

2 (25m 26s):
And before the days of code zero, it was a very powerful sale by that stage. We'd now got down towards the doldrums and, and that was another interesting time because it was basically very hot virtually no wind and do it have clear skies and no cloud, and then suddenly very hot, strong gusts of wind. The advantage over the doldrums was lots of rain schools. So we could actually wash some of our clothes. We had a very small lottery, which I keep those. And although we had sealed bags with dirty clothes in them, I fade. Well, all I did was when I changed my Knicks, I just chucked them over to the side and donated them for deep. I didn't think anyone would. So it's a bit like submarine life, then it wasn't.

2 (26m 7s):
It was indeed. It is one of them. The doldrums we had, one of our crew members was a Royal Marine and he went over to the side just to check just a scrub off the waterline. Cause we've just virtually become. And we recommend that you roll. Marie was probably pretty good sharp page in case running flashing around, he was also our doctor. We don't, we only had one medical incident when the knee of one of the crews swelled up. We think he got a last flight of splinter from crawling into the Lazarus to sort out, to, to do the change of gas bottles. It was very painful. It didn't seem to go down. So the doc, Ron Marine said, if it's not better tomorrow morning, I'm going to inject you with antibiotics. And he spent the whole practicing injections on one of our valuable oranges.

2 (26m 47s):
Next day, the knee had cured itself. It was a testimony to the power of fear, but we came out of the doldrums and crossed the a great honor, 30th of September. And despite the sail changes, we were actually able to have a small crossing the line ceremony. And we sent a signal to the Admiralty to say adventure was boarded greeted, and granted free passage by King Neptune at 15 degrees West at 16 hundreds, his majesty was astonished our rate of progress and indeed experienced some difficulty boarding. He was delighted to see a Naval vessel under sail after all these years. So that was us through the doldrums and into the Southeast trades. And we spent the next 10 days on one tack and he got used to living on an angle, but this is where the high pressure system came in because you had to say around that the old tip of ship days, they used to go right the way across the Western side, almost the Brazilian coast before they then came back to go towards Cape town around capable of hope.

2 (27m 39s):
What we did, of course, with sales, you could sell a much better angle, was go round the high pressure system. And we had, we carried on board, a large reaching general, very high cut clue had January, but it was literally sheeted almost back at the stern. But the great thing about that is we could carry it at a high angle of heel without getting water into it. And we sailed basically on a relative wind angle of about 40, 45 degrees. This is a very powerful point of sailing for those Nicholsons. And, and this was actually for us, turned out to be a real waste basically. Now just, just a little bit about the navigation this stage I used to do Sunrun sunset in the morning, run a brilliant altitude at noon, another another run and the sun and evening, I didn't really do star sights because I, I just believe that star sites from a yacht is a bit of a lottery because your horizon is so far is so close to other.

2 (28m 37s):
And it's so difficult to get a star at that time. And just quite frankly, it was a bit of a waste of time. And you've got to bear in mind that we were only doing about 180 miles a day. So with the sun sites, quite frankly, that was enough for us for accurate navigation. One interesting point about our tactic with the high pressure system was actually that became the yardstick and it has become the yardstick for all the successive round world races. It's what people now do. They basically plots the high pressure system Nichols, and these days with satellite forecast, it's so much easier to just plot it and they literally sell around it. One other little thing, just, just in the side, I mean, it was we'd settled into a routine.

2 (29m 20s):
It was, you know, we were all just having a lot of fun. Those of us racing in leg one and leg four from Rio back to UK, but basically people who raced in civilian yachts in the soda. And anyway, and for us, it was just like, you know, a rather long offshore race that the bottom two legs from Cape town to Sydney and Sydney to Rio, they had slanted the crew selection towards people with a lot more cruising experience and heavy weather because you gotta remember, this is the first cruise around the world. Race. Nobody really knew quite what to expect, but for us, we would settle into a routine of just enjoying what was actually a really good, fun race.

2 (30m 5s):
Bear in mind that you didn't see a soul. No, so no other boats at all. But we did have, we were accompanied by albatrosses as we got to the beginning of October, which will wonderful. You just, if you haven't seen albatross, it is just the most gorgeous thing to see. These birds would just follow you for days. And you've got to know which ones are, which, and it was fantastic. Did you name them? We didn't name them, but you certainly, we had a pair which we reckon were sort of numb and son or something, but anyway, and they would fly. And what they do is they would land on the water is often, and to take off, as the waves came up, the big swell, they would all do it, just spread their wings.

2 (30m 46s):
They wouldn't actually flap their wings, but the wind coming up the face of the swell was just enough lift for them just to lift them off and off. They went. It was absolutely wonderful to watch amazing birds. It was another interesting to the other side of that time. Was those of you who remember your history in October, 1973 was the Arab Israeli war. And we used to listen to the world service because the BBC world service would actually give out the handicap positions as they were. That was the only way we found out how well we were doing. And so we used to listen to that sports broadcast just before the news and we'd left it on the radio on. And somebody came along and said, there's an Arab Israeli war.

2 (31m 29s):
And there was a classic quote from one of the guys who just said, where's he? And it was just, I know it sounds a silly thing to say, but it just encapsulates the fact that your world was a 55 foot yacht, nothing else mattered. That was all that mattered to you. It was just what I got on in that yacht, a wonderful way of doing things. One of the other things we actually did do was we made our own bread because the, the Navy <inaudible> the oratory, which in those days was at Karen's yard. They basically produced a baking mix that only needed salt water. So every day we had fresh bread, we use it making and it was the mother watch had competitions as to what's what they could produce. And some of the more pornographic shapes that came out of the bakery sometimes probably wouldn't be allowed to be sold these days, but it was lovely to have fresh bread every day, no fresh water and no water maker.

2 (32m 19s):
All our food was tinned. We had some fresh fruit, which we had apples lost it pretty well, but you you're living basically off some compo ration packs. And the whole of the boat was a full deck of boxes of compo rations, which were re stowed. So you had them day by day. So you'd, you could just take it out. And we literally ate our way down through the false deck. So to start off with, when we started, you could hardly walk through the boat. You had to crouch. It was just all this food there, but amongst the other things, and those views, you have happy memories of compound ration packs, remember things called Tiffin bars. And we had a, we had a nutty draw and all a nutty went in for the day, went in there.

2 (33m 3s):
And the big thing was the Tiffin bars. And we knew somebody was pinching the Tiffin bars, and we couldn't work out who it was. And you'd go the nutsy draw when you were on watch at night to find the Tiffin bars had gone. So my watch, what we did was one night, we sat there. We had every single torch in the boat up in the cockpit, and we put a little piece of cardboard on the runner for the draw. So you could hear when it was opened and delivering our watch, we suddenly heard this particular bit of cardboard as the door was open. And this guy was floodlit by about 10 torches, pinching and nutty. He got a suitable punishment. Does he go there?

2 (33m 44s):
He was absolutely caught red handed, but as we were getting on, now, we were getting done now towards the bottom of the South Atlantic. And certainly we were by this stage out of shorts and ended up foul weather gear. It was getting pretty rough, but we were also, we were now being reported as being first and on the 20th of October, we heard that Burton cutter and actually finished. So we knew they had to give us a lot of days time, but a couple of days before that we'd actually cross tacks with Burton and cutter, which a 55 foot yacht, 80 foot yacht after some 38 days of racing was pretty impressive. But on the 21st of October to follow, get a, believe it or not an appropriate day, Dawn broke and there was table mountain.

2 (34m 29s):
I breathed a sigh of relief because there's navigator I'd actually got us there. We were in the right place, but the wind gods didn't really finish with this. And the wind dropped off a bit and we had to fight for the last few miles. We ended up doing all sorts of sail mate Zelman who was, as we jived back and forth under Spinnaker. And by this stage, it was quite a large spectator fleet, but at 1525, we crossed the finish line and the engine, believe it or not started first go. And we broke the bands, which we'd had to put round the propeller, the folding prop. And that was it. We were there and we were over the moon. We basically crossed there was second boat to finish. And we were nearly a day ahead of <inaudible> in a 77 foot boat. And on handicap, we demolished the opposition and we were first by two and a half days.

2 (35m 13s):
So that was it. Really. And then I came back and the Navy said, right, you've had all this fun. You better go to sea. So I joined this destroyer in Portsmouth and we sailed just after Christmas. We went into a full, full Southwest of the Gale and I was as sick as a bloody dog on board, the ship and the ship's company thought it was hilarious that this roughly toughy Yachty seasick. So there we are, that's it, Tim, that sounds like an amazing experience speed on the first ever round the world Whitbread race. It was, I mean, I was very lucky and I, adventure went on adventure, one, three of the four legs, but sadly on leg two from Cape town to Sydney, they had a problem with the rudder and they, they finished way down.

2 (35m 58s):
And so we didn't actually win the race overall. So the Mexican Swan, the 65 one, but no, it was, it was a great event and it was really good. And well, what it did do, of course, was it did provide for the Royal Navy, the, the, basically the foundations for the skippers and things for the joint services, sail training center. Yeah. So John services actually started by then, or was this store, the, the catalyst, it was the infancy. They would, as the, as I said, adventure was the first Nick 55. And as the others called, they had nine on order.

2 (36m 39s):
As the others came off the stocks, they came into Hornet slowly, the joint services sales center built up, but in those days, the skippers were all active service and there were very definitely the Navy yachts, the eyeballs yachts, the army yachts, and they will all run slightly differently. I mean, I was very lucky after a year at sea in destroyer, I went back and actually took over Dasha brand new from Canberra Nicholson's is my own Nicholson 55 for three months, which was a lot of fun. And that was quite an experience in itself. But, but I think the sail training in those days was slightly, slightly different to the way it is now is perhaps a little more, a little more chaotic and a little more relaxed, I think is the best way of putting it.

2 (37m 28s):
What else has been brilliant, Peter? Hopefully we can, okay, Tim, we can do this again. And then we'll talk about you run into rule you sure. Yep. Very happy for now. I thank you very, very much, Jason. I really found it fascinating as well and enjoyed it. If you did, please share it with your friends. If your podcast app allows, please put a review and rate it as this would help me massively. Thank you for listening.

0 (37m 58s):
<inaudible>

2 (38m 32s):
Thank you for listening to my podcasts. If have enjoyed them

1 (38m 37s):
And your podcast app allows, please leave a comment or review and please share them with your friends. The reason I got it into this podcast, malarkey in the first place is so I can leave a legacy for my children and my grandchildren in the years to come. So they will know what I did with my life. I wish my grandparents had done the same for me. Unfortunately they didn't in my latest series of podcasts on giving people the opportunity to lead their own DeCoursey for their families for the future.

1 (39m 17s):
If you have any criticism, negative or positive, and you wish to get in touch with me direct, you can email me at timheale@hotmail.com. That's timheale@hotmail.com. I thank you for your time and thank you for listening.