Two-man time clipped

Press, 26 February 1980, Page 32

Two-man time clipped

PA Auckland The 12m Birdsall design Arethusa crawled across the Devonport finish line at 6.43 a.m. yesterday for line honours and a course record in the 1250-mile Two-Man Round the North Island race. Crewed by George Knightly and Dave Cochrane, Arethusa clipped seven hours off the previous best time set by the 13m Farr design Gerontius in the inaugural two-man race in 1977.

The last miles of the circumnavigation were slow.

It took Arethusa nearly 14 hours to cover the final 38 miles in from Channel Is-!

land, and nearly five hours for the last four miles in from Rangitoto light to the finish off Devonport Wharf.

Arethusa finally anchored off Orakei Wharf until a light breeze filled in from the south-east to waft her home under spinnaker. “By then we’d had a gutsful,” Knightly said later.

“After the storms off the west coast and then 50 knots off East Cape, the last lap was a bit much.” But Knightly’s spirits improved as the total calm continued late into the morning.

“If it could happen to us, the boats astern could be

suffering the same and that still gives us a chance on handicap. “We had 11 hours up our sleeve in Gisborne, but lost a lot of that off East Cape. “We got a hammering and made good only 40 miles in 10 hours. “The boats that left later got through without any trouble and made a lot of time on us.” Arethusa’s main rivals on corrected time were the 9.5 m Pamaro, sailed by Robert Greenwood and Peter Cameron, from Timaru, and the 10m Marimba 11, sailed by the Aucklanders, Eric Wing and David Anderson, the 1977 winners.