Pride Spurs Whitbread’s Round-the-World Sailors

At the Southeast 17th Street causeway over the Intracoastal Waterway, many worlds meet. To the southwest, cruise ships dock, chop-a-block with multinational clienteles. From the northwest, charter fishing boats rumble away from hotel marinas and private piers toward Port Everglades Channel and the fishing grounds offshore.

To the northeast stands Pier 66 Resort and Marina, all spit and polish, fern bars and waterside cafes, and primary layover facility for the fleet in the Whitbread Round the World Race.

To the southeast stands a lesser hotel and a flamingo-pink shopping center. At the lesser hotel, the Best Western Marina Inn, part of the Whitbread overflow will dock this week. At a small, smelly bar tucked away in the pink shopping center, an ersatz treasure hunter named Dick Vogel was holding court late one night last week.

Vogel’s tales of treasure were nonsensical; his admiration for the Nazi infantry in World War II was vocal and comparable in zeal only to his distaste for the Whitbread race.

“Whitebread, who cares about the Whitebread?” Herr Vogel said. “Bunch of slimy limeys and (assorted other racial epithets) chasing each other around the world. Who cares? What’s the point?”

In the bar that night while Vogel presided was a knot of journalists in town to cover the Whitbread. The correspondent from Britain’s The Independent sat quietly while Vogel railed about gold coins, emeralds and the Wehrmacht (“an Englishman is never unintentionally rude,” he said several times), but Vogel’s assessment of the Whitbread set him off.

“But that is--quite exactly, really--the point,” said the correspondent from The Independent. “Slimy limeys, Italians, Swedes, Dutch, Finns, Americans, Kiwis, Australians and Germans racing around the whole bloody world. Not for money--for a chance to win a few silly, plated trophies and the privilege to be able to say they have done it.”

The point seemed quite lost on Vogel. Treasure, after all, to many is something you can pick up, rub between your fingers and admire or sell. Perhaps the point is lost on many other Americans as well.

There will be some who notice that Steinlager 2 and Fisher & Paykel, each a multimillion-dollar campaign with major corporate sponsors, are neck and neck over the past four legs of the race. Others may have taken note that there is no American entry and there is one all-woman crew. But few will be able to tick off the ports of call, the large or small tragedies and triumphs in 33,000 miles of racing.

To many of the crew, being there at all is treasure in itself.

On the top boats, in Division A, crew members are paid about $30,000 a year. Going down through the other classes, Division C, D and Cruising Class, some crew are paid, but most pay their own way--including owning interests in the boats they sail.

Except for the top boats, the yachts are secondhand, perhaps veterans of previous Whitbreads, perhaps only the best available under their financial restrictions.

La Poste, sponsored lightly by the French post office, is the smallest boat in the race, with an IOR rating of 40.46 feet. The boat is last in the standings and not due in until Monday, a week after the leaders. But its crew list, made up entirely of postal workers who pay their own way and change after each leg, has been filled for years.

Schlussel Von Bremen is owned by the Wappen Von Bremen Sailing Club and its crew schedule is arranged to allow participation of as many club members as possible.

Liverpool Enterprise, an English entry, is set up as a trust fund and is a training ship for young people. Its crew is either unpaid or paying.

With Integrity, one of two boats in the all-British Cruising Class, has been sailed in each of the Whitbreads and won the 1973-74 and 1977-78 races as Great Britain II. Its skipper, Andy Coghill, sold his house so he could sail this race. His crew is partly paid and partly paying.

Creightons Naturally, another recycled English entry, had been stored in a boatyard since the 1981-82 race. Several members of its crew have a financial interest in the yacht, which they personally rebuilt. The yacht also is a watch craft for International Dolphin Watch and records all sightings as they race around the world.

“They’re all good people involved. They’re all go-getters,” said Steinlager 2 skipper Peter Blake. “They’re not namby-pamby at all.

“Whether they win or come in second or come in 10th in the race, what’s important to them is that they are out there having a go. It’s the fact that they got round at all.”

That Creighton’s Naturally still is in the race perhaps typifies the dedication of the sailors and the interest and understanding of the Europeans who passionately root for their men and boys as they go round.

On the morning of Nov. 12, while Creightons Naturally was running heavily before a full gale across the bottom of the world, the yacht gybed unexpectedly and two crew were thrown overboard. Both were recovered, but one, Tony Phillips, could not be resuscitated.

Two days later, with the permission and blessing of Phillips’ parents, he was buried at sea and Creightons Naturally raced on.