A voyage with Tony
FORMER EDITOR PAUL GELDER RECALLS A MEMORABLE BISCAY VOYAGE WITH BULLIMORE
It was meant to be a day sail from
Bristol Docks to Falmouth aboard Tony Bullimore’s new giant catamaran, Team Legato. Tony had re-mortgaged his house to enter The Race, a non-stop drag race around the world for the fastest multihulls on the planet, and was planning the start of the shakedown cruise, a December dash across Biscay, to Barcelona, where race started at midnight on 31 December 2000.
With three other journalists, I’d been waiting on standby for a weather window. We finally cast off on 18 December, expecting to be dropped off in Falmouth next morning.
Barry Pickthall, Bullimore’s press spokesman, was standing beside me in a bright orange one-piece survival suit. “£35 quid ex-north Sea oil rig rescue gear!” he enthused. His dress sense seemed a bit over the top for a day sail. Since Barry had organised the trip, I wondered if he knew something I didn’t.
By mid-afternoon there was talk in the cockpit of a deep depression charging across the Atlantic. Navigator Jason Owen joked about dropping us off in Ireland. There were ten crew, plus four journalists but only eight bunks. I found a spare bunk only to be woken by a fellow journalist announcing: “There’s been a crew mutiny!” Bullimore’s No 2, Frenchman Bernard ‘Zoe’ Perrin, had decided it was “too dangereux” to transfer us to a RIB off Falmouth. Instead, we were racing south-west to escape the storm. Next stop Spain.
Protests about deadlines, lack of passports and Christmas office parties fell on deaf ears. None of the yacht’s state-of-the-art comms were working. The wiring wasn’t completed and the manuals had been left in Bristol. There was nothing to do but enjoy the ride. I spent three nights hot-bunking in the ‘God Pod’ with Tony and Jason as we pounded to windward in Force
7-8. Waves smashed into the floor like sledgehammer blows. As Tony struggled into a one-piece suit, he declared in one of his famous malapropisms: “Crikey, you’ve got to be a bloody ventriloquist to get into this, Paul!”
Then there was the thrill of helming Team Legato, capable of reaching 35 knots and flying a hull.
Finally, on day 5, with food running out, we docked in Lisbon. Next stop was the British Consul’s office for emergency passports. Tony generously paid our airfares and even flew back to London with us.