Team NZ crewmates mourn Blake

9.00 am

Sir Peter Blake, who was killed yesterday aboard his research vessel in Brazil, was widely respected because he never wanted to be the "big shot", says a former shipmate.

Team New Zealand skipper Dean Barker said Sir Peter, who had been sailing around the world while Barker was still a junior sailor, just wanted to be one of the team, not the one making all the decisions..

"He's done an incredible amount for sport for New Zealand," Barker told Radio Sport.

"He was certainly the man who created Team New Zealand for the '95...challenge.

"He had such an amazing air around him. He'd walk into a room and you'd know he was there. We all had incredible...respect for him right from an early age."

Team New Zealand's current syndicate head, Tom Schnackenberg, said Sir Peter's leadership was the key to winning the America's Cup.

"If we hadn't had him for those several years that he was leading the campaign, raising the funds, providing the leadership and giving us all the encouragement then we wouldn't be defending the cup right now, that's for sure," Schnackenberg, the syndicate's former tactician, said.

A man of wide-ranging skills and interests Sir Peter's shyness meant his qualities were not always visible to the public.

"But he was focused and he was definitely a man with a courage in his convictions and it is probably something like that which led to his killing," Schnackenberg said.

"I can imagine he would have stood up to these people and it's probably the thing that ended in his death."

Remembered mostly in New Zealand for his America's Cup feats, Schnackenberg said Sir Peter stood tall in world yachting for a host of other personal achievements, including Whitbread round-the-world races and breaking the world record in a catamaran in the Jules Verne Trophy on Enza.

"Those would be two of the things which would be remembered by most professional sailors as his greatest achievements," Schnackenberg said.

Schnackenberg said it "would certainly not be business as usual" today at the Team New Zealand headquarters in Auckland's viaduct basin.

Team New Zealand chief executive Ross Blackman, who set up the 1995 America's Cup campaigns with Sir Peter and Alan Sefton, said news of Sir Peter's murder was tragic.

"We've lost certainly one of the best guys that I have known in my life."

He said Sir Peter was extremely happy in his environmental work.

"He was absolutely passionately in love with it. He really felt he was beginning to make a difference.

He said Sir Peter had made a movie recording his visits to the Antarctic and along the Amazon River which would be released next year.

Blackman said Sir Peter had left the Cousteau Society to set up Blake Expeditions when work with the former just got too complicated.

He said Sir Peter was a simple man who liked things done simply.

He had long been passionate about the environment, and had commented that on his round-the-world trips he was seeing less sea and bird life, and he was worried about that.

Blackman said Sir Peter was the best leader of men and campaigns that he knew.

"He was a passionately honest person and undoubtedly the best leader and manager of a campaign that I've ever seen.

"He had an uncanny ability to delegate responsibility and to completely support the people he had delegated to.

"It was unquestioned support. Peter would support you no matter what mistake was made.

"That's a very rare skill.

"Clearly he was a visionary. Not only was he a tall man but he could see a lot further than most people. He could see what winning a Whitbread would do for New Zealand and he could see what winning an America's Cup would do for our country.

Sir Peter Blake could make dreams come true, said former Team New Zealand tactician Brad Butterworth.

"It's just a tragedy he's been killed by some low-life," Butterworth told Newstalk ZB radio today.

"It's a tremendous shock. I woke up this morning and a friend from the States called to say this has happened. For Peter to go in this way is something unbelievable."

Butterworth sailed with Blake on many voyages, notably Steinlager's triumph in the Round The World race. He was Team New Zealand's tactician before joining Russell Coutts at the Swiss Alinghi syndicate last year.

"He was the first guy in our generation to make a career of ocean racing," Butterworth said.

"He taught a lot of us how to sail properly in the ocean, and also to respect it. Everyone who sailed with him and all the guys on those boats had tremendous respect for him and always will."

Butterworth paid tribute to Sir Peter's fundraising abilities, saying his ability to make business people share his dreams had financed many a sailing venture.

"He could definitely talk people into doing things they probably didn't want to do and spending a lot of money on something that in the end was very successful. Without him we wouldn't have got away in '95, and we certainly wouldn't have won the Whitbread in 1991.

"All round, we had a lot of fun, which was one of the main things. That's what I'll remember."

- NZPA


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