Flyer clips leg record

Press, 2 December 1981, Page 48

Flyer clips leg record

PA Auckland Flyer clipped 4 hours 36 minutes off the record for the Cape Town-Auckland leg of the round-the-world yacht race when it crossed the Orakei finish line at 6.27 a.m. yesterday. The 76ft Dutch sloop, owned and skippered by a merchant banker Cornelis van Rietschoten, took 30 days 4 hours 27minutes 50 seconds for the 7101-mile journey. The record, set in the 197778 race by the 76ft Heath’s Condor, was 30 days 9 hours 3 minutes.

Ironically, as Flyer zipped across the line with a spinnaker set to a 15-to-20 knot northerly, Heath’s Condor, now Condor of Bermuda, was going back in the water at the McMullen and Wing yard, on the Tamaki River, completely rebuilt after ramming Tetiaroa Atoll in July 1980. Flyer was given a big reception — on and off the water.

The escort grew until there were 100 boats of. all descriptions following Flyer into the inner harbour that was ringed by crowds — on the Tamaki waterfront and on North Head. The four New Zealanders in the crew — the watch captain, Erie Williams, the sail trimmer, Grant Dalton, and the general hands, John Vitali and Warwick Buckley, were clearly the most delighted to finish the drawnout trek through the Southern Ocean, up the Tasman and into Auckland. Van Rietschoten commented: “It was slow in the beginning and slow at the end, but very good sailing in between. “The last nine days, all on the wind, were terrible, a big disappointment to all of us, but we had a great race with Ceramco. “Our aim is the fastest time on each leg, so we pick the fastest boat and race her. This time it was Ceramco. They never passed us. Sometimes we were level, but she never passed us.” Flyer had an immediate date with a sparmaker when it arrived at Marsden Wharf. A new bottom section ofi the mast, being brought out ' from the Netherlands, must be fitted before the start of the third leg, from Auckland to Mar Del Plata, scheduled for December 26.