Hectic week for N.Z. yachtsman

Press, 10 January 1983, Page 3

Hectic week for N.Z. yachtsman

NZPA Sydney The Dunedin yachtsman. Dick Mcßride, has a hectic week ahead of him to get ready for the next leg of the single-handed round-the-world yacht race.

The tall red-bearded yachtie, who built his 13 metre schooner City of Dunedin over the five years before the race start, arrived in Sydney at midday on Saturday after a 56-day crossing of the Indian Ocean from Cape Town.

Now he has until January 16 to prepare for what could be a more hazardous journey, the 7800 miles across the southern oceans, skirting the icebergs of Antarctica and crossing through the treacherous Straits of Magellan at the tip of South America before heading up to Rio de Janeiro.

City of Dunedin will be slipped this week to have her undersides cleaned and prepared for the southern latitudes while other painting and repairs will also have to be done.

All went well for Mcßride in the early part of his 6900mile crossing from Cape Town until about mid-way across the Indian- Ocean when he was hit by fierce gales for about three days.

"There were two northeasterly storms, one after the other," he said. He faced near disaster then, being washed out of the steering cockpit by the high seas but came to no harm through having his life-line attached. And then later the yacht nearly went right over in a storm south-west of Perth, tipping to 120 degrees. Mcßride later found a pair of scissors spiked into the woodwork inside the cabin at about head height. They had shot across the cabin as the yacht heeled over, but the laconic McBride does not appear concerned at all about the dangers of solo-yachting at this scale.