Blake’s School of Hard Knocks Pays : Sailing: Whitbread Round the World race leader prepared his boat through the experience of failure in the previous four events.

Sailing history will record that Peter Blake’s 84-foot New Zealand ketch Steinlager 2 led the fifth Whitbread Round the World Race almost from the start last Sept. 2, but it has been a lot longer than that.

Where history--and most of his competitors--will err, Blake says, is that “the race starts not at the start gun. It starts when you decide to have a boat.

“A lot of these people will moan and groan that the race rules aren’t fair, but what it falls down to is they didn’t do their homework . . . their research work.”

For example, Blake said, is his superior weather information told him to head much farther west than anyone early on the first leg out of England to Uruguay, where he arrived 31 hours 3 minutes 59 seconds ahead of the current runner-up, Fisher & Paykel, the other New Zealand boat.

That was significant, because Steinlager 2’s overall lead is now 35:01:27--a gain of only about four hours in about 85 days of sailing the next four legs.

Also, everybody except those sailing Fisher & Paykel and Sweden’s The Card (currently fifth) brought the wrong kind of boat, failing to recognize that a ketch, with its smaller mast aft--not a sloop, with only one mast--was better for the altered, predominantly off-the-wind route of this Whitbread.

With 3,837 nautical miles to go on the last leg back to England starting May 5, Blake says his rivals’ errors are apparent.

“They went on past performances on what they thought was right,” he said. “Unless you really researched it hard for a year or two, you ended up with the wrong combination. Tough luck.”

Blake, 40, may seem smug and arrogant, but he has learned how to win this race the hard way. He is the only person to sail in all five.

His first was as watch leader aboard Burton Cutter in ‘73-74. The boat missed the third leg when its hull cracked.

As watch leader on Heath’s Condor in ‘77-78, he saw the mast break, although the boat made up enough time to be first to finish, losing on handicap.

(This is the first Whitbread in which the top boats are sailing “level,” without handicaps to determine the standings.)

In ‘81-82, Blake was skipper of Ceramco New Zealand, which also lost its mast and any chance of winning.

Then came Lion New Zealand in ‘85-86.

“We said, ‘OK, we don’t want to break a hull, break a rig or break a rudder,’ ” Blake said. “So we made the hull extra strong--too strong, possibly--and the rig wasn’t gonna come down around our ears, and the rudder was supposed to be specially built to withstand severe (stress).

“So we had no problem with the hull, no problem with the rig. A whale took the rudder off.”

In light of all that, most of the other sailors--such as Britain’s Bob Salmon on Liverpool Enterprise--don’t resent Blake’s success.

“Peter Blake has earned the victory,” Salmon said. “He’s probably the most respected skipper in the race. He’s done a hard apprenticeship.”

Blake said: “Some people are moaning that the ketches are faster. But look at The Card. The Card isn’t faster . . . so maybe there are other factors there. Maybe the other boats aren’t as dedicated.”

The prerace favorite was Merit of Switzerland, a sloop that is currently third.

“Merit carries a deep freeze full of food,” Blake said. “They’ve got a table. We don’t have either. If you want to win you can’t have any niceties. If you want to have a nice time at sea, don’t expect to win.

“You’ve got to cover every little factor. You get a hundred of them together and suddenly you’ve got a hundred miles on the next boat.

“The New Zealand boats are out in front because they can see only one track--race mode--and we’re the most extreme boat of the lot. There are no comforts.”

Steinlager 2 has 16 bunks--one for each crew member--because the rules say it must.

“And that’s it,” Blake said. “There’s no deep freeze, no oven, no refrigeration of any sort.”

There aren’t even any showers.

“They’re not necessary ,” Blake said. “When it’s hot you’re gonna have a bucket bath or take a cupful of water in the galley and have a shave, if you’re feeling particularly bad. You can have a sponge bath, but most people wouldn’t bother. You don’t get very dirty over a two- or three-week period.”

The boats must start each leg with a minimum amount of fresh water, and Steinlager 2 has a desalinator to make up to 40 gallons a day from seawater, which it uses mainly for drinking and to reconstitute its store of freeze-dried food. Canned food would weigh much more.

“We even tried to get the jam and honey freeze-dried,” Blake said. “Anything you take on the boat that makes it heavier. You have to move that weight somehow, and the only way you’re gonna move it is by taking horsepower out of the sails, and then the boat’s gonna go slower.”

“When it’s cold we hardly have to make any water at all. The more you make, the more diesel (fuel) you have to have on board to run the water maker.”

Water weighs about 8 pounds per gallon, fuel a little less.

And the crew won’t be putting many photo albums together.

“The crew clothing, the bedding, the food, the books, the cameras . . . we have only two still cameras on the boat,” Blake said. “The guys aren’t allowed to have personal cameras. You put 15 on the boat and it’s quite heavy, with all the film and the batteries.

“Some might say that’s being fanatical, but it’s because you want to win. And if you take that approach with the food and all that, you tend to take that approach with the way you service the yacht and the way you sail it. You become more particular rather than becoming a bit sloppy (and saying), ‘Oh, this is OK.’ No, it’s not OK. We want it done properly.

“Sail changes are done in as fast a fashion as possible, just as you’d do the sail changes in America’s Cup racing around the buoys. We go out and practice it and practice it.

“Ten seconds here, a minute there saved in sail changes, opposed to a fuddled-up one, means you’re even farther ahead. When you’ve got a boat that’s nearly as fast as you are, you need everything you can get.”

Blake has said this will be his last Whitbread.

“You just have to have the guts to keep going back,” he said. “If you don’t keep going back, you certainly aren’t gonna win.”

What many don’t realize, Blake said, is that, relatively speaking, Steinlager 2 has been cruising most of the way.

“Since we left Uruguay on Leg 2, we haven’t been able to sail our boat as we would like. We’ve been forced to sail our boat on a route the way other people have sailed their boats.

“You can’t split up from the rest of the fleet. You have to cover them. Our boat is not going as fast as it might go.”

Although Fisher & Paykel has been close, Steinlager 2 has received a Beefeater Trophy for winning each leg, and rivals will be driving hard to claim at least that much glory on the final run back to Portsmouth.

“I don’t give a stuff about it,” Blake said. “Why should I? We’ve won five of the six legs. If we win six, that’s very nice, but at the end of the day the only thing people will remember is who won the race.

“We’ve driven the boat pretty hard, but conservatively hard, because you’ve gotta get there. No point breaking the boat now by driving it too hard. That would be pretty dumb.

“Unless we hit something or something breaks, which is unlikely with the checking that we do, we would have to run into some debris, like a submerged container, but the same thing could happen to the other boats.”

And if it does, they should expect little sympathy from Peter Blake, who has suffered it all.

“(Other) people say now, ‘Oh, we’re learning about the boat and it’s going faster and faster.’

“Bull! Blarney! You should have done that back before the bloody race started. We haven’t learned a thing--nothing--since the race started. It was all done before the start.

“For anyone to say we were lucky . . . well, those guys didn’t have their act together.”