第四届环球帆船赛的一大改变就是卫星跟踪系统代替了原来的位置报告系统，这一改变为帆船赛带来了巨大的影响，船长们滥用不规范的旧制度的时代成为了历史， 在新的系统下，15支船队的每一支都有不同的指向标。
所有这些智慧的进步——更多的技术含量，更复杂的操作系统，更多的专业参与，以及更多的赞助商、赞助资金的进入，以及更高级的安全标准，超越了以往的任何创新，都昭示着帆船赛在不断向前演变，将帆船赛提升到了一个新的高度。
帆船的位置报告每几小时就会被更新一次，罗盘显示的经纬度数据总在在变化中。但是对于大多数船队来说，1985年的比赛最终还是一场个人和个性之间的角逐。如果说第三届比赛的中心人物是康妮和布雷克的话，那么第四届的比赛则成了一个无名小卒的表演，因为7艘大型maxi帆船在争相挤撞冲过终点线时都被一艘小型、但装备最完善的L’Esprit d’Equipe号压住了光芒。L’Esprit d’Equipe号是1981年比赛的“出口33号”帆船，船长是年轻、但雄心勃勃的法国人里尔奈•皮恩，他是受里尔奈•皮恩是艾利克•托巴利的激励和影响才参加帆船赛的。
这是布雷克第四次参加环球帆船赛了。他的新帆船长24米，是一艘名为“雄狮纽西兰”的重量级帆船，由雄狮纽西兰啤酒厂赞助。人们普遍认为布雷克的船队定会获得本届比赛的冠军，原因不仅是因为布雷克比其他人有更多的环球航行经验，还因为他的帆船有当时最先进的计算机辅助的导航系统，一级用来缓解气温过高或过低状况的气候控制装置等一系列奢侈品。此外，他们的厨房里还放置了一个微波炉。尽管布雷克买进了价格昂贵、试验性质的冻干设备，许多人仍然疑惑他将如何使用这个大家伙。
在一些船上，食物问题仍然是当务之急。在挪威数据GB号上，也就是之前参加过两次帆船赛的GB2号帆船，船长鲍勃•萨尔蒙雇佣了一个名为特雷西•爱德华兹的年轻厨师，她是250名参赛船员中的仅有的五名女船员之一。她的工作就是在6个星期的时间里给15个船员准备一天三顿饭。但是，特雷西•爱德华兹的工作并没有做长。虽然她的饭做得很可口，但是她不喜欢船上这种缺乏领导和团队合作的状况，因此，在船队到达开普敦后，她上到了大西洋私掠者号上，在这艘船上，她第一次尝到了冻干食物的味道。由于受不了这种食物，她几乎在船上引发了一场公开对峙。
瑞士船长皮埃尔•菲尔曼参加过1977年和1981年的比赛，今年他又一次参赛。皮埃尔•菲尔曼曾经学过工程技术，做过计算机销售，他的专长在于筹集资金，寻求大企业的预算来支持新帆船的制造，这一次，他的船是长24米、像火箭似的的瑞士联合银行号。
这些“摇滚明星”式的船长的行列中还真有真正音乐大腕明星的加入。来自英国流行乐队“杜兰杜兰”的领唱西蒙•李•邦找到了多家企业买下了“鼓”号帆船，“鼓”号是一艘maxi级帆船，曾归属于英国的最有名的帆船选手之一的罗布•詹姆斯。但罗布不幸在前一年被溺水身亡。
“鼓”号在朴次茅斯启航前几天才到达。它刚刚在6星期前参加了法斯耐特跨大西洋赛，航行中龙骨折断，帆船也翻了，船员们被困在底朝天的帆船里。这样的恐怖经历让一些船员退缩了。但是，船长斯科皮•诺瓦克突破重重困难把帆船和船员带到了索伦特海峡，只是在驶往开普敦的途中碰上了大问题，他们脱离了航线，和其他船队失去了联系。
Light winds all the way to the Doldrums were followed straight after by the mother of all gales which turned the Portsmouth to Cape Town leg from a donkey trot into a full scale demolition derby.
There was widespread damage with a series of dismastings and delamination problems, forcing the race committee in Cape Town to put the South African Navy on standby for emergencies.
Fortunately, they were not required, but as soon as UBS Switzerland and Lion crossed the finish line, 16 hours apart after 34 days of racing, the boatyards went into action in a bid to have the full fleet raring to go again at the start of December.
The full fleet was fit and raring to go, Eric Tabarly having agreed to concede one day per leg as a penalty for replacing his keel on Cote d’Or and Skip Novak carrying another ton of weight on Drum as a result of repairs to the hull and rudder.
There were more light airs on the run into the Southern Ocean and much to the crew’s disappointment, not much wind when they got there. After passing Prince Edwards Island, a crewmember on Lion wrote in the ships log, “And we had our own, our very own , private bloody calm yesterday.”
They cheered up when the first iceberg was spotted though the onset of thick fog made life tricky and some individuals wondered what in God’s name they were doing with their lives.
“Everything I wear is wet,” wrote Simon Gundry on Lion. “But why complain. Everybody else has the same problem. Leaving my climb up the steps till the last possible second before 4am and the start of my watch. Why do overtime on a shitty night like this, I thought.”
On Cote d’Or, the hairdryer came out, but went nowhere near anyone’s head. It was used instead to dry out the telex and weather fax while on Lion, there were other more pressing problems, all to do with heads. “Due to renovation of the yellow head, and the red head becoming the dead head, a reallocation of services and schedules is now taking place. One and a half sittings per day (or three every two days) booking required to take no longer than 7 ½ minutes per sitting. Pees – three at three minutes, no booking required.”
A broach on Cote d’Or left Michel Mouseu over the side, grasping the outside of the lifelines, his grip only loosening once he had hauled himself back over the pushpit and into the cockpit.
Come Christmas Day, the crews were ready to let their hair down. A Lobster Bisque with Royal Couscous Harissa followed by a chocolate log, was served up on Cote d’Or and some crewmembers on Lion hung stockings out on the bulkheads. They remained empty though a gift from the weather gods, in the form of some good breezes, propelled them forwards in the fleet to put a festive smile on their faces.
As the fleet rounded Cape Reinga on the run into Auckland, NZI Enterprise and Atlantic Privateer were in front with UBS Switzerland and Lion not far behind, though soon after, Lion collided with a whale, and was slowed by damage to the rudder. News that a Kiwi boat could finish the leg first had all of Auckland out on the water to welcome her back and witness a thrilling finale.
Atlantic Privateer chose to hug the shore while NZI stayed further out which gave the American boat a three nm advantage. Digby Taylor pulled out all the stops to move within half a nm of the leader, but it was Padda Kuttel and his crew on Atlantic Privateer who slid across the line first, followed two minutes later by the Kiwis. All fifteen yachts completed the leg which was a race record, but it was Phillips Innovator, the Dutch crew, who posted their first win on handicap, followed closely by leg one winners L’Esprit d’Equipe.
Anyone who was in Auckland on 15 February 1986 will still remember the restart as being one of the highlights in New Zealand’s rich yachting tradition. More than 6,000 boats churned through the waters to send the fleet on their way and 300,000 spectators joined in the fun shoreside.
Three days later, the mast on NZI came crashing down, putting a dampener on that celebration and an end to Digby Taylor’s campaign. The problems of getting a replacement mast from England proved insurmountable and the 16 strong crew were forced to return to their day jobs.
No such calamities on UBS Switzerland who roared off towards Cape Horn and to South America beyond. Mar del Plata in Argentina had been withdrawn from the course, due to the fall out from the Falkands War and instead the fleet headed for Punta del Este in Uruguay, billed as a South American paradise.
The Roaring Forties proved to be not roaring at all, but the Southern Ocean gave them all a test, especially Atlantic Privateer which did an almighty broach as they surfed at around 20 knots. Even the spreaders disappeared underwater, the crew claimed afterwards, and Tracy Edwards struggled to hold things together in the galley. “The conditions were horrendous and I thought I was going to die. I’d be cooking and puking up into the sink at the same time,” she admitted in her autobiography Living Every Second.
Drum too was rampaging through the waters when she suddenly rolled twice and was knocked down on her side for around five minutes, which left the spinnaker shredded and a spinnaker bag, known as a turtle, wrapped round the propeller. Crewmember Micke Olsson, a trained diver, donned his wetsuit and diving gear for a dip in the freezing waters, but he was pulled under the stern of the boat, losing his facemask and mouthpiece. Eventually the turtle was cleared but in the process, Drum lost vital miles and time.
Race HQ’s radio link was buzzing with reports of damage caused by the strong winds, but these petered out completely as the Cape loomed into view. Unusually, it was surrounded by waters that could only be described as avuncular. The reason was the time of year. Normally the fleet would have arrived in late January, but the start of the 1985 race had been put back by a month and in March the landmark proved more like a tourist attraction than a sailor’s graveyard.
First round was Fehlmann, but it was the guys on Lion who hit the jackpot when they caught sight of Halley’s Comet making one of its rare appearances in the earth’s orbit. This was also the moment, between Cape Horn and Punta del Este, that the race really took off with skippers of UBS, Drum, Atlantic Privateer and Cote d’Or all fighting hard to be the first to Uruguay, the light headwinds adding extra spice to the action. In one seven hour period, the UBS crew completed 14 sail changes in a bid to keep up their speed, and this diligence paid dividends when the Swiss crew were first over the line, nine hours ahead of Drum and nine hours and 20 minutes before Atlantic Privateer. Behind the maxis, L’Esprit d’Equipe regained the overall handicap lead by a margin of nearly five hours.
The final leg proved a fascinating two-dimensional affair with the big maxis battling for a win on elapsed time and the rest of the fleet vying for a podium place on corrected time. Blake, lying second on elapsed time, could only win if UBS suffered breakages and Skip Novak on Drum, who had come second in Uruguay, was within 18 hours of Lion. But with fluky winds up the Brazilian coast, the Doldrums and the full might of the North Atlantic ahead, the race remained anything but a foregone conclusion.
On Drum, the precocious Grant Dalton won the ‘dick of the day’ award for describing himself as a ‘legend in the making’ and the crew enjoyed a hygiene moment when a rain squall offered a chance for a scrub, though Novak’s reference to it focussed on ‘a whole lot of spotty bums’.
The Azores High once again proved decisive. UBS veered east of the Azores and entered a frontal system which hurried them along, while Drum opted to pick up the southerly winds around the back of the High which slowed them down. With just a few days left, they were becalmed and the gap to the leader stretched to an irretrievable 500 nm, which at the finish line in Portsmouth translated into a 40 hour deficit.
They were even overtaken by Cote d’Or who sneaked across the line three and a half hours ahead of the frustrated Drum crew and things took a turn for the worse when Customs Officers, accompanied by sniffer dog, boarded the English boat just minutes after the finish to see whether the rock star had picked up any illegal substances in Uruguay.
Blake arrived soon after to retain second place on elapsed time and the little French boat L’Esprit d’Equipe arrived in eighth place, some four days after UBS, to take the 1985 Whitbread Trophy in front of a huge group of fans who had travelled across the Channel to applaud France’s emphatic victory, their first of the event.
“…一大群形形色色、背景各异的船员”
赛事浏览器