Steinlager 2
Is there a more decorated boat in Whitbread history? Probably not. Skippered by Sir Peter Blake,
Steinlager 2 was a titan in the 1989-1990 Whitbread Round the World Race, and she remains the only boat to have won all six legs of the race. After the Whitbread, she was sold and moved to Italy where she sailed under the names Safilo and Barracuda. Stefan Detjen, a Swiss sailor with a passion for nautical history, purchased her, restored her to the original livery and brought her to Alicante for the Volvo Ocean Race’s Legends Regatta. Amoung the visitors onboard for the event were Tony Stevenson and William Goodfellow, trustees for the NZ Sailing Trust. “The NZ Sailing Trust felt that she needed to be returned to New Zealand and would make a valuable platform to the Trust’s youth development programs, at the same time preserving the heritage and pedigree of the yacht and the crew that sailed her,” says CEO Paul Powney. The boat was purchased and brought home to New Zealand. Today, she is sailed up to 200 days per year by high school students who learn boating and life skills. Blake’s other Whitbread boat,
Lion New Zealand, is also a part of the program. Powney says these boats “are ideal platforms for leaderships and team building with youth. You have to work together to get the yachts from A to B. These programs are transformational for many. The trust has a goal of having 2,000 participants through the programmes each year.”