Original subtitles

(eerie ambience)

(speaking in foreign language)

(cheerful regal music)

- [Anthony] I was very much enthused by

Sir Francis Chichester because when he went

around the world, he aimed at trying to beat

the average time of the clipper ships

out to Australia and back again.

Therefore the idea began to have something which wasn't only

a thousand miles or six hundred miles,

but something which could really test people.

And I thought, "Let us start a new sport entirely,

"and have a 'round the world yacht race."

- [Narrator] As soon as this was announced,

powerful sailing nations put together teams

of their most outstanding navel officers,

the most adventurous and competitive sailors in the world

signed up for the race.

Lasting about nine months, this round the world regatta

is the most prestigious trans-ocean yacht race there is.

30 years later it would become the Volvo Ocean Race.

(slow inspirational music)

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] Ramon searched the continent for the perfect

boat, but didn't like anything he saw.

While returning to Mexico, he read that a Swan yacht

had won a regatta from Bermuda to Newport Island.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] The Swan 65, a sturdy yacht.

Perfect in every detail.

Capable of sailing both short and long distances.

A two-masted ketch, the Swan 65 can hold up to five sails

at the same time, picking up impressive power and speed.

(light rock music)

Now he had the perfect yacht,

but he also needed the perfect crew.

He only had three members, his son, Enrique,

his trusted employee Cantis,

and his wife, Paquita.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] He also enlisted his two nephews.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] But it was not enough,

he needed expert sailors to complete the crew.

- I saw a huge yacht in the Belgium harbor.

I asked the harbor master, "What sort of a boat is that?"

He said, "This is a Mexican Swan 65,

"and they're going to sail with it

"the Round the World Race."

I said, "It's not true, really?"

"Yes," he said.

"Crazy people of course, Mexicans."

Yachting at that time was very nationalistic.

They went for English boat or French boat.

They couldn't use any foreigners.

There was no Dutch boats in this race and I decided

I want to sail this race.

And I think it was not possible, in that time,

to get together a Mexican crew able to drive that boat

to its limits so I knocked on the boat and I said,

"Here am I, I want to join you."

- I was building the sails for the boat and so I

asked one of my friends, I said, "What are these sails for?"

Big sails, a lot of them going to Finland.

And he said, "This crazy Mexican guy's gonna do

"the Round the Rorld Race.

"You should call him up and go."

And so I thought, you know, that's not a bad idea.

So I called up and said,

"I'm building your sails, I wanna go."

He said, "You're on."

- The boat was put together, shall we say, through the mail.

Everything was done through letters.

So I found out who the organizers were

and I wrote away to them.

And that's how it started.

- I joined the yacht not knowing anyone

and just in case things didn't happen,

I had enough money in my pocket to go home

from Cape Town, South Africa,

that was going to be the first stop.

- I got a call three weeks before the race.

So I frantically took a leave of absence from my job.

I didn't know anybody on the boat.

- My name is Dalrymple-Smith but everyone calls me Butch.

When we did the race, I was 40 years younger.

We were all young kids.

- These people have no safety, no communication, nothing.

And still they jumped on this kind of adventures,

and even his wife jumped on that adventure,

not really knowing what she was jumping into.

I think it's fantastic.

I think they're more adventurous than anyone actually

because very few people are willing to live today

without communication.

If you ask people to leave their phones,

they get frustrated.

- When I first got to England,

I was walking down the street,

literally from the bus station,

just a big ol' mustache, long hair, and this car comes by

with a bunch of guys hanging out of it,

screaming in Mexican, whatever they were screaming,

I don't remember.

And they go screeching to a stop, they go,

"You must be Keith."

"Yeah."

"Get in, we're goin' for dinner."

I was 22 and all I thought about were all these places.

All the cool places I got to go.

England, Cape Town, Sydney, and Rio, never been there.

Never really thought about the 45 days in between.

- [Narrator] The race consisted of four legs.

The first, from Portsmouth to Cape Town.

The second from Cape Town to Sydney.

The third from Sydney to Rio de Janeiro.

And the fourth from Rio de Janeiro to Portsmouth.

27,000 nautical miles, 50,000 kilometers.

- They can die, they will meet storms.

Anything can happen and they're gonna sail all the way

around the world and one of them will win but all of them

will go through the same difficulties.

There's no fate, there's no director who scripts the show.

If you start to get scared you should never do this race.

- [Narrator] On the morning of the 7th of September, 1973,

the Sayula II was christened and blessed

by two Irish priests that Ramon had sent for.

Holy water was sprinkled on the yacht and crew.

The launch was a spectacular event which involved

not only Ramon's family and friends,

but also the press and several race officials.

(speaking in foreign language)

- They sort of said, "They are Mexican.

"What the hell are you doing in a race like that?

"That is nothing for you."

- The famous journalist came up to me and he said,

"What are you doing on a Mexican boat?

"Surely you can't expect to win."

And I just said to him,

"I never start a race without intending to win it."

And he sort of laughed and, yeah.

He said, "How do you feel about safety?"

And I said, "Well, I thought that, in fact,

"if all the boats were accounted for by the end,

"it would be considered a success."

I think the fact that people were likely to die on the race

was understood.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] Before departing, Ramon asked his crew

how they felt about their chances in the race.

(speaking in foreign language)

(cheerful regal music)

(cannon blasting)

- [Announcer] 17 yachts from seven nations are setting out

on the world's longest ocean race.

Seven months and 27,000 miles of hard sailing.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Announcer] Pen Duik VI, hot favorite of the experts.

Built with massive French government support,

she's pioneering a ruthless new type of aluminium

ocean racer with incredible strength

and a keel made of the precious metal uranium.

Eric Tabarly, the greatest name in French yachting,

takes the tiller himself, with so much at stake.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Announcer] Great Britain II,

Chay Blyth's superb new yacht

built of fiberglass/foam sandwich, is the scratch boat,

setting an enormous genoa that needs a keen lookout

stationed in the bow.

- [Narrator] Perhaps the most well-known personality was

Sir Chay Blyth, skipper of Great Britain II,

with a crew of paratroopers.

In 1968, with little experience,

he took part in the controversial Sunday Times

Golden Globe Race.

In 1971, he became the first man in history

to go around the world westward, nonstop, solo.

- When he started his career with British Steel,

and then with Great Britain II, it was I who went around

to see a person called Union Jack Hayward,

who was multi-millionaire.

I tried to get him to sponsor the race, but he said,

"No Anthony, I'm not going to sponsor the race,

"but I'm going to sponsor Chay Blyth."

(speaking in foreign language)

- My attitude toward the Whitbread Round the World

Yacht Race was very much an attitude of winning.

- The most well-organized, by far, was Adventure.

They had worked their boat up for months,

and they were head and shoulders above any competitor.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] 19 yachts competed in the race,

six from France, five from the UK, three from Italy,

two from Poland, one from West Germany,

one from South Africa, and the Sayula from Mexico.

Each yacht carried the country's most experienced yachtsmen,

as well as new young sailors who had become

the future stars of yacht racing.

(calming instrumental music)

(speaking in foreign language)

- When I first got to England, I didn't know what my job

was going to be on the boat, I just figured I'd be sailing.

But then Ramon said you're gonna be watch captain,

as well as a sail maker.

And then I become the guy who, anytime anybody had

a question about what to do, what sails to have up,

anything like that, they'd call me.

- I don't like to sail on the wind, anyway.

I like reaching, but I asked Keith how fast

the boat would go on the wind,

how fast it would go reaching,

and how fast it would go running,

and going straight there would be on the wind,

and it would be the closest route.

But the reaching around the high around would be farther,

but we would be going faster.

(speaking in foreign language)

- We had several very experienced sailors,

we had some people who were absolute novices,

and I was somewhere in between.

- Ramon asked me what I could do on board so I said,

"Well I did three years of medicine at University."

And he said, "Right, you're the medical officer."

- A navigator and radio operator so I

have a telegraph license so I took weather reports

so we knew where to go on the yacht.

- Poncho and Roberto, Enrique, they could sail the boat

but they were short of experience handling sails

and all those sort of things

which are very important of course.

But they managed to pickup very, very quickly,

to drive the boat to do sail handling.

Within no time they were really good yachtsmen.

(speaking in foreign language)

- Every day is different but the regular days that

you do your watches, we had the system of

six, six watches during the day

and four, four, four, during the night.

But you get so used to it, to the system.

- There was a wide variety of experience on board.

There weren't a lot of prima donnas.

(speaking in foreign language)

- Cantis was doing the cooking,

with a lot of Mexican cheese.

(laughing)

When I came back,

I wanted my food here also with his cheese.

I was so used to it then.

(speaking in foreign language)

- Except for Cantis the cook and Ray the navigator,

I think everybody did more or less, everything.

Driving the boat, changing the sails,

we were all multi-functional on the boat.

(speaking in foreign language)

- The bigger boats were often underfunded

and Ramon selected a boat that he could actually

campaign properly.

All the kit was top quality.

We had the best sails, we had good winches.

- He did everything first-class.

We were sailing in luxury.

- He was assertive but in a very low-key way.

He had a wonderful style.

- I think he got mad at me two times,

and both times it had to do with the housekeeping.

Like he always said, "I like order."

He got angry but then five minutes later he would ask me

if I want a drink.

- Most ocean race yachts are dry.

You don't drink alcohol on the boat during the race.

But we were allowed to drink when we came off waters.

One glass of red wine or a beer which is very special.

This was a good idea because you relax a little bit.

One glass of wine is doing a lot.

You sleep well, and so on.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] As they crossed the horse latitude,

the last portion of the trade wins blew itself out

for the Sayula and the wind fell to force one.

The horse latitudes are located about

30 degrees north and south of the equator.

Sometimes called the Calms of Cancer,

or the Calms of Capricorn,

the horse latitudes are named after Spanish ships

transporting horses to the West Indies.

Boats would get trapped in these calm waters,

prolonging the voyage and causing water shortages.

The crew would be left with no choice but to throw horses,

and other livestock, overboard to survive.

With a broken mast, Eric Tabarly's Pen Duik VI

is to abandon course and go directly

to Rio de Janeiro for repair.

She receives a new mast from the French Navy by air,

which will allow her to continue on her way.

Bernie Hosking, a crew member of Chay Blyth's

Great Britain II, fell into the water.

But fortunately the others managed to rescue him.

- But on that occasion you haven't got time

because you're the captain, you're the leader.

So you've got to get on and organize the chaps.

Get the guys back on board.

- [Narrator] A barometer measures atmospheric pressure,

a sudden drop means a storm is coming.

(speaking in foreign language)

- We were caught with a big squall,

probably about 30-40 knots.

We can usually see these winds,

but we were just caught unaware with all our sail up,

and that was very hairy getting to all down.

Mizzen spinnakers cracking like bull whips.

(speaking in foreign language)

- There were no sat navs or GPS' at this time.

You had to use the sun and the stars.

And Ray and the navigator on Adventure had one thing

the other boats didn't, they could read Morse Code

at 22 words a minute, and construct weather maps.

And that was vital in the first leg.

And as the results show, Adventure first, Sayula second.

- [Narrator] Against all expectations,

the Mexican boat was only two days

behind the English Navy's Adventure,

which proudly occupied first place in corrected time.

(speaking in foreign language)

- You know, the fast that we were doing pretty well

surprised me a little bit, because we had,

the crew wasn't,

okay strike that one.

I mean we didn't have the best crew in the race.

Cape Town was fun and one of the good memories

about Cape Town was we climbed Table Mountain,

which is this flat mountain in Cape Town.

To get down, we went down this ravine, or gully,

and it was all loose rocks, and we almost had to run down.

Anybody that did that, they couldn't walk for two days,

'cause we hadn't walked anywhere for 45 days.

So our legs were just like rubber.

It was, I laid in bed all day.

That was memory.

- [Narrator] While the competitors repaired their boats

for the second leg, Ramon faced a bigger challenge,

keeping his family together aboard the Sayula.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] With his wife gone, Ramon now had to deal with

his son, who had trouble adapting to the small quarters.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] Ramon's business would become the most

important of its kind in Mexico.

The crew said their final goodbyes before departing

from Cape Town to Sydney.

They were about to enter dangerous waters.

(melancholic music)

(cannon blasting)

- [Announcer] And a clam start as the fleet heads out

for the wild Southern sea.

- [Narrator] Wild winds, wet weather, and cold temperatures

plague this part of the ocean,

known to sailors as the Roaring Forties.

(menacing music)

- I wouldn't sail through the Roaring Forties again

for a million bucks.

(speaking in foreign language)

- Called the Roaring Forties because the wind

from the 40th parallel, to the 50th parallel,

that's the span of the Roaring Forties.

And it's because all these depressions are moving across

this area of ocean from West to East,

generating enormous winds like 30, 40, and 50 knot winds.

(speaking in foreign language)

- We were sailing on the spinnaker,

I was steering at the time and suddenly this

southerly wind came in, it was really a tremendous wind,

about 30 or 40 knots and all I could do was just

spin the boat around and we just took off

with this wind behind us.

I called all the hands on deck,

or somebody called all the hands on deck,

and I remember Keith coming up and saying,

"You're going very well, why are you worried?

"And I said well, the trouble is,

"we're trying to go that way. (laughing)

"And we're going this way."

- [Narrator] One thing that's certain about bad weather on

the high seas, is that you can't understand it until you've

lived through it yourself.

It can go on for hours, or days, without stopping.

You can return to your bunk and snuggle down,

hoping that when you wake up, the strong wind

will have dropped and the water will be calm,

but this doesn't always happen.

The sinister creaking of the mast and the water splashing

over the deck, two typical sounds which remind us

that at any moment, we may be called upon

to go out there again.

- We were doing a spinnaker change, and as part of that,

when you release the old spinnaker,

you have to pull it in by the sheet.

Well that was probably the scariest moment in the race

for me because I happened to be steering the boat.

Now Ramon was pulling in on that sheet

and the sail filled partially so it pulled back

quite substantially.

If he would let go, he wasn't gonna fall onto the boat.

- I still hear his voice, "Man overboard."

Because I was the first guy on deck and I found Ramon

on the side of the boat, hanging on the sheet.

- My brain was just going in circles, trying to think about

what I was gonna do if he let go,

because to turn a boat around with a spinnaker up

is a very dangerous thing to do.

- You can at all with a man with wet clothes,

with the speed of the boat.

And then we had an alert that the boat made a movement,

what pushed, the wave pushed Ramon up

so at that time we could get him back on deck.

So I remember this very well, yes.

- [Butch] Obviously that was everyone's worst nightmare.

- We got him back aboard, thank God for that.

Offshore sailing, the way we did it, you're fatigued.

It's hard to get rest when you only have four hours off,

for example, between some of the watches.

(speaking in foreign language)

- You're almost continually scared for a long period where

you're worried about things,

you're frightened of gear failure,

you're frightened of somebody falling over the side,

you're frightened of all sorts of things,

but those sort of things were a bit

more normal in those days.

Today, people are a little bit more safety conscious

than we were at that time.

- [Narrator] From the 14th to the 25th of November,

2,555 nautical miles were covered.

An average of 232 miles per day.

Strong gales of wind force six were felt on those days.

The Sayula II relentlessly stuck to her course.

The days of the 20th and 21st brought gentle

and refreshing winds, and in the afternoon of the 25th,

the radio announced.

- [Radio Announcer] All yachts, all yachts,

on the night of November 24th, the 33 Export

lost its co-skipper Dominique Guillet overboard.

He was not recovered.

- [Narrator] But the Roaring Forties were about to show

the crew at the Sayula that their main challenge was not

the human skill of their Whitbread competitors,

but the forces of nature on the open sea.

The Sayula II was moving forward at great speed

on a high sea with breaking waves.

- I was down below on the starboard side of the board,

Butch was on the port side.

We were on a day off and I was cleaning David Bowen's

camera which he loaned me, nicely, so I

And there's a hatch right over the settee or the dinette,

and it got black,

because there was wave that came over and broke

right over the top of the boat.

And picked the boat up and threw it down

and broke some windows.

(speaking in foreign language)

(waves crashing)

- I was thrown up into an upper bunk and then

the floorboards came up on top of me

and then the water came in.

And Butch fell down there and he started throwing

the floorboards off of me so I could get out.

That's a pretty vivid memory.

I thought I was gonna drown.

(speaking in foreign language)

- I could hear this rush of water

and I thought, "Good Lord, the mast has broken

"and has punched hole in the hull."

But, I looked up and there it was, the mast was in tact.

(speaking in foreign language)

(waves crashing)

- And our bilge pumps didn't work.

Because they were full of balloons from

the thanksgiving party the Mexicans gave us.

Butch commented as we were throwing buckets of water

out the boat, he said, "There's no better bilge pump

"than a frightened man with a bucket."

- And I can remember everyone working their sole cases out,

getting the water out of the boat.

- But it was very cold, it was southern ocean.

After six, seven hours, I became stiff all over my body.

I couldn't move anymore.

- One doesn't normally get knocked off a sailboat

and still be recovered, and continue on sailing.

When you're in the worst of the conditions,

you think to yourself, "Is this really what I wanna do,

"and is this worth it?"

(speaking in foreign language)

- We were fully instrumented.

Of course, most of that went away after the capsize,

so for half of leg two, getting up to Sydney, Australia,

we didn't have any boat instruments.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] When they could not be contacted by radio,

the crew were given up for lost, they were presumed dead.

(melancholic guitar music)

- After we determined that we weren't going to sink,

Butch and I had the evening watch

and we saw the most spectacular display

of the Australis Aurora.

We call them Northern Lights in the northern hemisphere,

but they're southern lights.

He had never seen them in his life,

and of course I hadn't either.

He almost went down and woke everybody up on the boat

to have them come up and look.

- [Narrator] The direct route to the finishing line

was across the Bass Strait,

which separates Tasmania from mainland Australia.

There are lots of cargo ships and ferries in this area,

so Ray, using only a torch and his knowledge of Morse Code,

informed a merchant ship that she could advise the

Australian Navy that they were alive and heading to Sydney.

- I know that they did capsize in the Southern ocean,

and their radio was broken I think in the capsize

and everything so they arrived two weeks later

and nobody knew that they had done this.

And then they have to tell their story.

Fascinating.

And today we will pick that story up

in the second it happened.

So we will have it on camera.

- [Bob] And through another stroke of just monumental luck,

we got a following wind, which was so unusual

for that part of the world.

- [Narrator] Because of this following wind,

the Sayula traveled at great speeds.

Due to their damaged radio,

they had no idea where they stood in the race.

- When we got to Sydney, we found out

that we were in 1st place in the race,

and that put Ramon in a very difficult position because

after the capsize, I remember him saying,

"We could never continue in the race."

- [Narrator] The yachts arrived in the Port of Sydney.

All suffering tremendous adversity and damage

in the second leg.

As Ramon contemplated retiring from the race,

he called home to his wife.

(speaking in foreign language)

- And the news that he was in first place overall

in the race, I think tipped the scales,

so that he felt he had no real choice

but to continue on in the race.

We lost considerable gear.

We broke some rigging, and he was faced

with a monumental job of trying to get the boat

back into sailing condition.

- [Narrator] The crew worked hard and got the Sayula

repaired in time to start the next leg.

The Adventure, true to her relay strategy,

changed her crew once again.

New men, new strength, to carry on.

Chay Blyth and Eric Tabarly also finished their repairs

in time and continued to push for the lead.

The third leg of the race began with these top boats

neck in neck, racing towards Rio.

The route from Sydney to Rio de Janeiro would pass by

Cape Horn, the historical trading route to

where clipper ships once made use of the strong,

yet dangerous, westerly winds for greater travel efficiency.

(cannon blasting)

(dramatic instrumental music)

For this leg, Ramon chose what was considered

the long route, staying in the northern latitudes,

then swinging down around Cape Horn.

(speaking in foreign language)

- To hit an iceberg in a sailboat would be catastrophic.

It's not so bad if you can see the iceberg,

but they have things that they call Growlers,

which is a large mass of ice that's just barely submerged.

So you can't really see it, especially with any wave action.

We were fortunate enough not to see any ice

on the whole race.

Except for snow, which fell on the deck many times.

- [Narrator] Strong winds, dangerous

notoriously turn the waters around Cape Horn

into a sailor's graveyard.

Countless ships and sailors throughout time

have been lost in the heavy conditions.

Not all the racers were as fortunate as Sayula.

The Adventure chose the most direct route

through the treacherous Southern ocean.

- Well the sea is simply cruel and you can't know

what it's going to do.

So sad with the loss of life,

but you have to expect it in this sport.

You can't get away from it.

- [Radio Announcer] Calling all boats, we have tragic news,

we have lost two other fine sailors.

Paul Waterhouse of the Tauranga,

and Bernie Hosking of the Great Britain II.

Let us take a moment of silence to salute

these fine young men.

(urgent instrumental music)

- [Narrator] The Whitbread favorite, Eric Tabarly,

was forced to retire his yacht,

after the Pen Duik VI broke its second mast of the race.

There wasn't enough time for the French Navy

to send a new one again by air.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] Thanks to Ramon's navigation and planning,

Sayula stayed in the higher latitudes,

and avoided disaster in its approach to Cape Horn.

This difficult feat christened even the most inexperienced

crew members of Sayula II, as true sailors.

Ramon, now a true captain.

(inspirational instrumental music)

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] When you round the Horn,

you become part of an exclusive club of sailors

who've taken on the ocean's most extreme conditions.

Today, more people climb mount Everest

than sail around Cape Horn.

- [Tjerk] If you want to be a really sailor,

you have to pass at least once in your life the Cape Horn.

- They have a special organization for anyone

who's sailed around Cape Horn.

That I rounded Cape Horn, I'm a Cape Horn-er.

(speaking in foreign language)

(relaxed light rock music)

- [Narrator] After rounding Cape Horn,

the waters calmed and tropical weather set in.

(Latino cultural music)

(speaking in foreign language)

- I saw this, what I looked to be an American woman,

and I said, "Are you American?"

She said, "Yeah."

I said, "Well what are you doing here?"

She goes, "Oh I fly for x airlines."

And I said, "Well, would you like to go sailing?

"We're a whole bunch of sailors here,

"sailing around the world."

And she said, "Yeah."

I said, "Well all right, come on down to the Rio de Janeiro,

"Iate Clube do Rio de Janeiro.

"Come on down at noon and bring your friends."

And she said, "Okay."

The next day at noon, she was there

with four of her friends.

We went sailing, we did all the things you do.

The girls wound up staying on the boat with us.

One day, the one that I was with said,

"Well, we have to go home tomorrow back to New York."

And I said, "Aw, too bad."

She said, "Well can I tell the next crew that's coming down

about this?"

And I said, "Yes, please."

So we had stewardesses rotating around from New York.

The last batch of girls, they wanted to go to Ipanema Beach.

We said, "Well, let's go to Ipanema."

And decided to go swimming so we took all our clothes off

and went swimming.

We're all swimming around out there, right off the beach,

having a great ole time and I looked up on the beach

and there were some, you call 'em Federales here,

I don't know what they're called in Brazil but

they were, with their machine guns,

picking up the girls' panties.

So I went up there and I said to the guys,

"What's going on?"

And they said, "No nude swimming on the beach."

So they let us all have our clothes and they put us in jail.

One of the brighter bulbs in the group said,

"Why don't we just put all of our money in somebody's hand,

"and knock on the door, and offer it to 'em?"

So we put together whatever money we had,

which wasn't a whole lot,

knocked on the door, opened the door,

handed the guy the money, and he goes, "Okay.

"Off you go."

(laughing)

And then we had to walk home.

(gun firing)

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] On the 19th of March,

Ramon had one objective in mind,

to catch up with the Adventure, where ever she might be.

Keith suggested tacking eastward,

but other members of the crew thought this was a

losing battle, and the best thing would be to go northward,

and stay in the path of the Great Circle.

But the final decision was always made by Ramon,

and this time he gambled on Keith.

The Sayula II headed eastwards.

- Ramon always had the last word,

which I think is a very good thing.

And he did this on a very pleasant way.

It was special to be on that boat.

- We were alone obviously for most of the race,

so it was our own motivation that kept

the boat going at top speed.

I think also we had a reputation of being a crew

that enjoyed their pleasures and were very relaxed.

But we were still pushing the boat quite hard.

- [Narrator] But the non-stop passage through the

strong waves of the Atlantic, known as the northeast trades,

left it's mark on the Swan.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] The crew members found themselves

facing a dilemma.

If they sailed at full force,

the mast could end up unusable, and they would not only

lose the leg, but the whole race.

On the other hand, if they sail too carefully,

they would lose any advantage over the Adventure.

After surviving storms and huge waves,

and even falling overboard, Ramon Carlin's heart

was set on one thing only.

- I remember in one three-day period,

we changed sails at least 150 times.

So that means that we were changing the sails

about once every half hour,

over three days.

So we were pushing quite hard.

(speaking in foreign language)

- We had no radio communication because our radios

hadn't been tuned properly,

and as we came up to the finish line,

Ramon could see the tension building,

and he went 'round to everybody

and he said, "I am very pleased with all the work

"you have done, no matter where we come, I will be pleased."

(speaking in foreign language)

- We finished on Easter Sunday, 1974,

at four o'clock, tee time.

- I couldn't have believed what sort of a finish

we were going to have.

(applauding)

Crossed the finishing line, dropped the sails,

and I looked up, and there must have been

three or four thousand people.

I'd never seen such a crowd before.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Narrator] This victory made Ramon Carlin the winner of

the first Whitbread Round the World Race,

and the first Mexican to win a multi-staged

international sporting cup.

- The personality is what makes this people special.

I think the best people in this sport, in this event,

they care about you, you are not where you come from.

And they're very strong on that, they look through all the

fancy clothes and the language and the countries

and the backgrounds and the money.

They look at who you are,

because they know that's what's gonna matter.

(speaking in foreign language)

- And Prince Philip was there

to present the prize.

It was a great party.

We were all dressed up with our Mexican hats.

They were fantastic and looked just great.

(speaking in foreign language)

- What he lacked from experience, he

Tireless work and his tireless planning.

He made the crew an extension of his family,

and he won over our trust, our loyalty, and I believe,

our love.

- He managed straight from the beginning to get

this crew together, to get the right boat.

But we sailed all the way around the world with the same,

nearly same crew.

This is okay.

(speaking in foreign language)

- He's just a wonderful person.

Kind and generous with the people on the boat,

and very well organized.

And that's why we won.

I just love him.

I hate to see that he's 90.

- After the prize-giving when everyone

had to leave and go their separate ways,

I couldn't even face actually having to say

goodbye to people.

It was all very difficult because we'd lived together,

we'd lived through so much.

(speaking in foreign language)

- That was the high adventure of my life and

I'm just so thrilled to have been able to do it.

(speaking in foreign language)

- I can tell you the most dangerous part of the whole trip

was taking a taxi across downtown Rio de Janeiro.

- And even when I was cleaning toilets on merchant ships

I liked it better than being a school teacher.

- To finish first,

you first must finish.

- I feel like quitting at every port.

- I haven't lived on land since 1973.

I don't feel the need to live on land.

- The Sayula crew were not a cruise.

Well the difference was that we've all lived,

we've been Round the World Race.

(speaking in foreign language)

(cheerful Mexican music)

(singing in foreign language)