Incident in a Nowhere Place (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine May 2002

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Incident in a Nowhere Place (Cont.)

THE NEXT DAY, DECEMBER 6, news broke around the world that New Zealander Sir Peter Blake, 53, the most accomplished ocean-racing skipper of his generation, had been murdered by pirates on the Amazon. Six suspects were quickly apprehended. Brazilian authorities announced that they had confessed. The story appeared straightforward: A famous yachtsman had been tragically and senselessly killed.

Although Peter Blake had lived in England for many years, his stature in New Zealand was unrivaled, and that entire small country was gripped by a paroxysm of grief that reminded many of Britain's after the death of Princess Diana in 1997. Thirty thousand people, including New Zealand's Governor-General Dame Silvia Cartwright and Prime Minister Helen Clark, attended the memorial service in Auckland on December 23. That day, a fleet of 8,000 boats took part in a "sail past" in Auckland Harbour as 100,000 New Zealanders watched on live television. "AN OCEAN OF TEARS FOR BLAKE," went a headline in the Wellington Evening Post.

In New Zealand, yachting is everything. An oceanic country of two narrow islands, it has produced a heavy crop of Olympic sailors, boat designers and builders, voyagers, and an entire populace that understands marine weather forecasts. Blake, born in 1948, grew up on the water—mostly in Waitemata Harbour, Auckland—in a family that built, sailed, lived, and breathed boats. He came of age at a time when yachting was looking for a new ideal, and he grew to embody it—becoming not only his country's champion, but the ultimate thoroughbred racer of big, fast, globe-circumnavigating sailboats.

The picture of six-foot-four Blake charging the intruders with a rifle made a compelling image, but it raised a disturbing question: what would have happened if the crew had just handed over their watches?

The world that Blake conquered began taking shape in 1968, when Englishman Robin Knox-Johnston capped an era of heroic, one-man voyages by becoming the first person to sail alone and nonstop around the world. That feat accomplished, ocean racers began to look for a new paradigm, and they found it in big-boat sailing. The emphasis shifted from the lone man to the machine, from heroism to technology: How fast could a giant "maxi" yacht, driven day and night by a crack crew, cross an ocean or sail around the world? In 1973 this quest found its expression in the Whitbread Round the World Race, a six-stage, go-for-broke circumnavigation—the ultimate spectacle in terms of noise, visibility, and sex appeal, an eight-month circus of logo-plastered boats, crews, shore teams, money, and media that moved around the world taking over whole harbors and, in New Zealand's case, a whole country. It was the race that Blake made his own.

His first two outings, in 1973-74 and 1977-78, were as watch leader and mate on Robin Knox-Johnston's boats, but Blake proved to be his own best skipper. For his third Whitbread, in 1981-82, he organized an effort sponsored, designed, and crewed by New Zealanders. Ceramco New Zealand galvanized the island nation; millions of listeners tuned in to hear Blake's regular radio interviews from sea. But his boat lost its mast in the first leg of the race. In 1985-86, Blake's Lion New Zealand was also a disappointing performer, but finally, in the 1989-90 race, he got it right. Backed by New Zealand's premier brewer, his Steinlager 2 won all six legs and overall victory.

Alongside what became a full-time career as a yachtsman, Blake made ample room for a family. In 1979 he married Pippa Glanville; they spent their honeymoon delivering a yacht from England to Australia for the Sydney-Hobart Race. They eventually settled near her parents' home in Emsworth, England—close to Southampton, the hub of the Whitbread world—and raised two children, James and Sarah Jane.

In 1994 Blake teamed up again with Knox-Johnston to go after the Jules Verne Trophy, established by the French in 1992. They screamed around the world in a 92-foot catamaran, the ENZA, racing a French trimaran in an attempt to better the 80 days taken by Verne's fictional adventurer Phineas Fogg. ENZA won in just under 75 days, recording the highest speeds ever traveled by a sailing ship until that time. It was pure boat, pure seamanship, and a matchless voyage Blake reveled in.

In 1995 Blake's Team New Zealand won the America's Cup, the world's most prestigious (if perhaps dullest) sailing race. The bright red socks Blake wore during the qualifying rounds became a personal trademark and a badge of Kiwi solidarity; when TNZ ran low of cash, a "Red Socks Fund" drive prompted New Zealanders to buy 100,000 pairs in three weeks to boost the team's finances. After his decisive win in San Diego, Blake was knighted in England by Queen Elizabeth. In 2000 Team New Zealand, with Blake in command again, took the America's Cup a second time.

His success was the result not of an outsize personality—although at six-foot-four, Blake was a commanding figure—but rather of his unswerving drive and, most of all, his leadership. "He was a natural leader," says Knox-Johnston.

Blake made a career out of sailing into danger with gusto, but never without the most meticulous preparation. And he had a gift for bringing the right crew. "His great skill was picking, integrating, and managing the right mix of people for any job—the Shackleton method," says Angus Buchanan, who sailed around the world with Blake on ENZA. "The old cliché is not to meet your heroes, but Peter was the embodiment of everything I'd imagined a hero would be."

It is also a cliché that heroes die young. And after Macapá, New Zealanders hotly debated whether Blake's heroics might have cost him his life. When the pirates climbed aboard Seamaster with their guns, several crew members attempted to resist; one was pistol-whipped in the face and fell to the deck. Blake rushed below and emerged with a rifle. There was an exchange of gunfire. The Brazilians claimed that they had not set out to kill, but had fired only when attacked.

The picture of Blake, the larger-than-life captain charging the intruders with a rifle, was a compelling image, but it raised a disturbing question: What would have happened if Seamaster's crew had just handed over their watches and cameras? Could the whole episode have been merely one more theft in a rough port? Would Peter Blake, New Zealanders asked, still be alive?

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