Bullimore ready to take on the high seas again

Team Daedalus is launched in Avonmouth

Tony Bullimore is one of the world’s best known yachtsmen with a unique profile that spans the globe. His 102ft catamaran Daedalus, with its hi-tech carbon wing mast, has a pedigree for breaking records from fastest 24-hour runs to being fastest around the world.

His strong bulldog spirit and determination drives this campaign, which will kick off with the Oryx Quest 2005 in February and graduate to a new 130ft catamaran for the Quest 2006 round the world race starting from Qatar in 2006.

Tony’s professional sailing career spans more than two decades and more than 300,000 racing miles, 90,000 of them in tough transatlantic races. Looking at the 150 trophies that take pride of place in his Bristol home, some like the 1985 twohanded Round Britain Race, were won first and foremost through his extraordinary tenacity. Take the third leg of that race around Scotland’s Outer Hebrides and Muckle Flugga as an example. Winds were force 8 and building towards a full storm. The spray whipping across the hulls of his 60ft trimaran Apricot, striking the skin like bee stings. Bullimore and co-skipper Nigel Irens, had already hunkered down to storm jib and third reef in the mainsail, yet still they were reaching across these huge seas at 20+ knots. There was no chance of sleep. Crashing from one exploding wave to the next, the stresses on boat, rigging and crew were extreme. This was the first big test for Apricot, and Irens, who had designed and built her, had his fingers firmly crossed.

They had set out from the second stop-over port of Barra, in second place overall and sensed that Mike Whipp’s rival 60ft multihull Paragon would be pushing just as hard. That blew away any prudent ideas of lying hove-to and waiting for the worst of the weather to blow through.

Suddenly, Apricot’s mainsail halyard broke and the sail came thrashing down on deck.. They were now down to the small storm jib wing mast alone, which remarkably continued to push Apricot along at 6-7 knots - but not fast enough to keep their rivals at bay over the final 100 miles to the safety of the Shetland port of Lerwick, the third stop-over in this race. The top of the mast was girating wildly as Apricot was thrown from one wave to another, but to keep going, one of them had to climb up the mast and reeve new sail halyard through the blocks.

Irens readily admitted afterwards that he was all for throwing in the towel. His immense experience told him it was just too dangerous to haul a man 70ft up a fiercely whipping mast. Just one hard blow would be enough to break an arm - or worse.

But Bullimore would have none of it. "I’m going up," he said firmly. And without further ado, latched the spare halyard to his harness. Holding grimly to the spar, knowing that his life depended on it, Bullimore inched up the mast, as Irens wound on the winch. The job of replacing the halyard took more than an hour. To Bullimore it seemed like 10. When he came down, his body was covered in bruises from the continuous battering he had received, but the job had been done.

The pair continued to retain second place into Lerwick, then moved through to take victory on the final leg of this 2,000 mile endurance race. "I take my hat off to Tony. Without his extraordinary tenacity, we would have lost this race half way round," Irens told me at the Plymouth finish. As a result, the two were not only rewarded with this hard-earned victory, but voted joint ‘Yachtsman of the Year’ for what was the greatest sailing achievement in 1985.

It was this same iron-will and tenacity that saw Bullimore safely through his toughest challenge - when his 60ft yacht Exide Challenger famously capsized just 700 miles from Antarctica during the 1997 Vendee Globe solo non-stop round the world race. Forced to survive in the upturned hull for almost five days before the Australian Navy could cover the 1,500 miles to mount a rescue, few experts gave him a chance in these freezing waters. The greatest threat to life was hypothermia. Survival can be counted in minutes when wearing in normal clothes in these cold waters. Would Bullimore have had time to put on his thermal clothing before he got wet? There was just no way of knowing, for the only signal emanating from Exide Challenger was from her emergency beacon that had alerted the emergency services in the first place. The Royal Australian Air Force search and rescue planes were first to locate the boat, and working in relay, they continued to circle overhead for three days, looking for any signs of life before the Australian warship HMAS Adelaide could reach the scene.

All this time, Bullimore was fighting to survive the only way he knows - head on. He had not been wearing his survival suit when the boat first flipped over, and his first job was to struggle into it and try to keep his clothes dry, away from the swirling waters within the pitch-black upturned hull. But even with this protection, he still had to endure the extreme cold in hands and feet, and soon lost all feeling in them. Next, he made a perch for himself on an upturned shelf, then scavenged what remained of his food - two bars of chocolate. His next plan was to open the hatch and swim out from under the boat to check whether his liferaft was still in place and ready should his boat suddenly sink. Opening the hatch against the pressure of the water was not easy, and in forcing it open Tony sliced off the tip of his little finger.

The hours ticked by interminably, and as the time ground out into days, Tony came to live on tenacity alone. It took five long days for HMAS Adelaide to reach the spot, and the first Tony knew about it was a surprising rat-a-tat-tat on the hull. He tapped a signal back, and buoyed with adrenalin, he dived down into the freezing waters once more, swam through the hatch. When he broke surface, his first sight was of this huge warship looming close by. Navy seaman raced over in inflatable rib and pulled him onboard, and Bullimore grabbed the first person to hand, the burly, bearded Chief Petty Officer Pete Wicker.

It took several months before Bullimore regained any feeling in his hands and feet, but remarkably, he lost none of his enthusiasm for ocean racing. Within three months, he was competing in the Round Europe Race, then busy preparing his 102ft catamaran for another circumnavigation in The Race in 2001.

Tony Bullimore and Daedalus designer Nigel Irens go back a long way - to 1981 with the launch of Tony’s first 40ft (12m) trimaran IT82 that also launched Irens on a highly successful career international yacht designer. Sailing together, the two won their class in the 1982 Round Britain Race before Bullimore went on to chalk up a third in class in the 1984 Observer/Europe 1 singlehanded transatlantic race.

1985 saw the launch of Apricot, a then state-of-the-art 60ft trimaran fitted with an innovative carbon wing mast designed and built by Irens in which the pair went on to win both the Round Britain and Irelalnd and Round the Island races that year and won all eight legs in the first Round Europe Race. In 1987, Bullimore teamed up with American builder Walter Greene to sail Apricot to win the 60ft division in the Carlsberg 2-handedTransatlantic Race. These outstanding successes led to Bullimore and Irens being jointly awarded the Yachtsman of the Year, and the trimaran, the Yacht Design of the Year award.