Unlikely start to yachting fascination

New Zealanders have an interest in yachting for a variety of reasons.

Most form their affinity from being involved in the sport as a competitor or from the recreational side. Others are fuelled by patriotism when New Zealanders do well. Some found the modern-day challenge of round-the-world racing a facet of fascination. The latter best describes this landlubber's situation

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The connection with yachting started in The Southland Times newsroom one Sunday evening. Usually, it was a slow time, which, for the newest reporter in the room, most of it was spent taking down sports results called in from golf, rowing, and assorted clubs. This particular night [January 6, 1974], while dealing with Bill Sargent's call with the Bluff golf results, my career's first significant news story emerged.

One way to relieve the monotony of taking down these results by wearing an unwieldy headset and pounding away on an old Imperial typewriter was to engage the caller with some discussion of matters of the day. On this occasion, Bill said, "That was interesting about that yacht that called into port today, wasn't it?" I said, "What yacht was that, Bill, I haven't heard about it?"

He said, "That yacht participating in that round-the-world race." My ears pricked up immediately. "It's a foreign boat. One of the crew broke his leg," I asked if the boat was still in the harbour, and he said it was. I bid him goodnight and immediately rang the chief reporter Oz Wockner, who had gone home for dinner along with all the other reporters, as you could do on a Sunday night in Invercargill. His response was immediate: grab a photographer and get down there.

En route to checking there was a photographer on hand, I advised the subs desk what was up, and we hit the road to Bluff.

The Peter von Danzig was still in the harbour, and they were happy to talk to us. The boat, built in 1936, was the oldest entrant in the inaugural round-the-world race and was crewed by 11 students from the University of Kiel in Danzig. If there was little to do in Invercargill on a Sunday, there was even less in Bluff. Greeting us with a can of the sponsor's product, it was the Whitbread round-the-world race after all; the crew told us that their mate Joachim Mueller-Deil, 25, had broken his foot when a winch he was working broke and struck his foot around 11 pm the night before.

The yacht's skipper Reinhard Laucht said the conditions when the incident happened were the worst since they left Portsmouth in September 1973. A doctor on board the boat, Tomas Reuther, suspected Mueller-Deil had a broken foot.

A day later, there was a chance to speak with Mueller-Deile, who was staying with a Bluff family after being released from Invercargill's Kew Hospital. While disappointed to miss the remainder of the leg to Rio de Janeiro [the race did not stop in New Zealand], Mueller-Deile did appreciate the chance to take in some landscape.

Because of their late arrivals at Cape Town and Sydney stopovers, the crew had no chance to do any sightseeing.

He explained that the crew worked for two years to prepare for the race, which was an amateur effort compared to other boats. The Germans had no significant sponsors, and much of their time before the race started was spent fund-raising.

"We knew before we started that we could not win in such an old yacht, but we saw it as an opportunity to go around the world," he said. None of the crew had done any deep-water sailing, their efforts being confined to the Baltic Sea.

Their boat was the property of their university. It was 18m long with a steel hull, 6mm thicker than a modern man o' war. In 1937, the German Army took the boat as a sea training ship. In 1945, two German officers used the boat to escape to Denmark to avoid capture by the advancing Russian Army.

Mueller-Deil was the radio operator and purser on the boat. He said the yacht's gear was dated, and his accident occurred when the teeth on the winch he was working on broke, and the handle struck his foot, breaking the third toe on his right foot in three places and dislocating his two little toes on the same foot.

"The voyage to Bluff was very uncomfortable as the rolling of the boat meant there was nowhere I could rest my foot."

Mueller-Deil was able to rejoin the race in Rio de Janeiro.