The Richard Mcbride

Story Round-the-world single-handers are made of stern stuff, but some are sterner – and a lot more colourful – than others.

Lined up with other 16 competitors in the inaugural 1982 BOC Challenge single-handed around the world race, the only New Zealand entrant was Richard Mcbride. With his steel staysail schooner City of Dunedin being the heaviest boat in the fleet Mcbride was realistic about his chances.

“I knew before the race start I wouldn’t come anywhere but last, but everyone was really nice about it and helped me out.”

The BOC race proved a tough test for Mcbride and City of Dunedin, but building the yacht and getting her to the start line had been a story in itself.

Up until 1982 Mcbride had had little involvement in boats. Growing up on farms in Banks Peninsula and Canterbury, after four years at Christ’s College and year at University, Mcbride had been more interested in the land.

He’d worked variously as a musterer, fencer, deer shooter, pylon rigger, bulldozer driver, fisherman and wildlife photographer. The latter job had led to one of his happiest times – 13 months at Scott Base photographing wildlife and looking after the dog team.

The idea for the yacht began in 1978, just after Mcbride had been shipwrecked in a fishing boat off the southwest Otago coast. Walking away from the wreckage, he perversely decided to buy a yacht and go sailing.

He soon realised he’d have to build a suitable yacht and decided on a Colin Childs-designed steel 11.6m centerboard ketch. To fund it, he got a job driving a bulldozer for Doug Hood Contractors, who were happy to let Mcbride build his yacht in the company’s Twizel yard.

As someone who’d always thought for himself, Mcbride didn’t hesitate to change the design as he went. For example, after discovering the stock steel lengths were longer than specified, he re-lofted the hull out to 12.2m overall. He also changed the rig from ketch to staysail schooner, moved the cockpit aft and installed a transom-hung rudder.

Working on the yacht in-between stints on a Caterpillar D8 bulldozer, Mcbride took five years to build her. Part way through in 1980 he heard about a single-handed race around the world, later to be called the BOC Challenge.

The race had been inspired by the 1968 Golden Globe Race, a non-stop single-handed race around the world. But the BOC was to be run in four legs, starting and finishing in Newport, Rhode Island, USA.

“Even though I’d never sailed out of sight of land, I thought it sounded like an interesting thing to do. Since I had the boat all I had to do was to learn to sail it.”

Mcbride was able to raise some sponsorship from Steel and Tube, ACT Containers and the Otago Daily Times, but it remained very much a budget campaign. Part of the sponsorship included Mcbride undertaking to lend City of Dunedin to the Otago Youth Adventure Trust (OYAT) after the race.

To qualify for the race, shortly after launching Mcbride sailed City of Dunedin into the Southern Ocean to 50o South. It was his first time out of sight of land. “You can spend a lifetime learning

racing tactics, but seamanship’s fairly intuitive – it’s something you pick up or you don’t.”

Qualifying complete, shipping company ACT transported City of Dunedin to Newport. The first leg was to Cape Town, which proved a disaster for Mcbride after he got caught on the wrong side of the South Atlantic high and spent a week virtually becalmed. Still learning how to sail City of Dunedin, he was second to last into Cape Town.

Determined to do better on the next leg to Sydney he kept well south and City of Dunedin performed better in the stronger breezes. That was until they became becalmed to the east of Tasmania towards the end of the leg.

The Sydney-to-rio leg started well for Mcbride and he was third in Class B around Cape Horn. Intending to pass east of the Falkland Islands, he had spent most of the previous day at the masthead repairing one of his twin forestays. Exhausted, that night he slept through a 90o wind shift and the wind-operated selfsteering put City of Dunedin onto a Falkland Islands rocky beach.

The war between the UK and Argentina had been over for six months and the UK still had a military presence there, including a large tug. Mcbride eventually got City of Dunedin off the beach using a local farmer’s tractor hauling a block and tackle hooked onto a large anchor dropped by the tug.

After being pounded on the rocks for three weeks, City of

Dunedin looked munted on one side, but the solidly-built yacht escaped with only one small hole. Unfortunately this drowned the generator, and as race rules required a working radio, Mcbride had to spend a couple of days in Port Stanley repairing it.

He completed the leg to Rio, but was now a month behind other competitors who’d already left for Newport. Undaunted, Mcbride finished the race anyway, coming 10th and last. Of the seven boats that failed to finish, four retired, two sank and one was wrecked.

City of Dunedin’s Ford engine had died en route so Mcbride worked in the USA to buy a new engine. Then Digby Taylor asked Mcbride to skipper his Whitbread 15m Outward Bound back to New Zealand, which he did with an inexperienced crew.

After stops at Panama, Galapagos and Pitcairn, Outboard Bound lost her mast two days out of Pitcairn. Mcbride and his crew were able to get the broken mast back onboard, erect a 15m jury rig and sail Outward Bound safely back to Auckland.

Mcbride then flew back to bring City of Dunedin home, arriving in mid-1984. The deal with OYAT fell over, due to unwillingness by the then director to take responsibility for the vessel, so he later sold City of Dunedin and she’s currently moored on Lake Wakatipu.

Meantime, Geoff Stagg from Farr Yacht Design had approached Mcbride offering to design a yacht if he wanted to enter the next BOC. Mcbride accepted the offer, but with hindsight believes it was the wrong decision.

“With the Whitbread and America’s Cup, sponsorship was bit thin, and we ran out of time and money. We decided to go for it anyway but it was a bad idea.” The Farr designed 18.2m, waterballasted yacht was state-of-the-art, built from the latest, high-tech materials. “We built a beautiful boat, but it was really expensive.”

Battling to get sponsorship, Mcbride struggled get Kiwi Express ready for the race. In hindsight, the rush meant corners were cut, most notably in the rig. The qualifying voyage for the second BOC had to be at least a 2,000nm point-to-point voyage, so after shipping Kiwi Express to London, Mcbride sailed her across the Atlantic to Newport.

Lined up against the other competitors in Newport Mcbride felt good about Kiwi Express, a feeling totally validated on race day as he led the fleet out of Newport. “I was sailing 10 degrees higher and faster than everyone else,” he recalls.

Two weeks later, while in third position and swapping positions with the eventual winner, Philippe Jeantot, Mcbride’s dream collapsed when the light, fractionally-rigged mast fell down. The mast builder had omitted compression sleeves in the hounds and there was nothing preventing the sides of the mast being pulled together at the hounds.

“The mast was perfect for a full on racing crew, but really for a single-handed boat it was too fragile. We should have used a bigger section.”

Unable to get the rig back onboard, Mcbride had to cut it away, and under jury rig managed to get Kiwi Express to Recife. A new mast was flown out, which enabled Mcbride to finish the leg to Cape Town but his sponsorship evaporated. “The bank basically owned the boat by then and there was no money left, so I had to withdraw.”

Mcbride sailed Kiwi Express back to the USA, and after 12 months there managed to sell her. It took him three years to pay back most of the debts of the failed campaign. During his 12 months in the USA he began a design course with the Westlawn Institute of Marine Technology, which he continued by correspondence upon his return to New Zealand.

After getting job with Nelson boatbuilder Malcolm Dickson, Mcbride won a design competition for a 12m cruising yacht, leading to him founding his own design business in Nelson, where he’s been located ever since.

Today he mostly designs commercial boats such as mussel barges and fishing vessels, but he’s also designed cruising yachts and luxury motor yachts. His willingness to stand behind his work has won him respect in the tough world of commercial boating, and Mcbride’s very proud of his involvement in the development of specialised boats for marine farming. B

“From bulldozer driver to boat designer, Richard Mcbride could only be a New Zealander.”