Fleet numbers dwindle but skipper flies flag with pride

By CHRIS RATTUE

Bill Hursthouse's finest moment racing his cherished Flying Fifteen came in victory on the Waitemata Harbour this week.

It was a poignant occasion anyway for the 87-year-old sailor, as he set out in the New Zealand Herald Auckland Anniversary Regatta.

Just last week, Hursthouse attended the funeral of an Auckland lawyer, Roger Craddock, a man Hursthouse had raced against for more than 30 years.

Craddock's death was the third in the past few years among the dwindling numbers in Auckland's Flying Fifteen sailors.

And although Hursthouse, along with his "much younger" crew Peter Shonk, was ready to race in any conditions this time, strong winds are always ready to curtail such a veteran sailor's career.

His Flying Fifteen, named Ffantail, was probably heading out in its last competitive race with Hursthouse as skipper.

"I would have gone out in heavy conditions, but I probably would have regretted it. I would have been a sick child by the finish," Hursthouse said yesterday.

However, the conditions were light, and Hursthouse was anything but sick by the finish. He and Shonk sailed to victory, despite handicapping themselves by crossing the start line early, thus giving their three opponents a head start.

"Peter and I were ecstatic. I've won one or two races in the past 10 years, but Monday was my greatest moment," Hursthouse said at the Parnell home he shares with his second wife, Marjorie.

You can hardly spend an hour with someone who has had the sort of life Hursthouse has embraced and hope to even break the surface of his experiences.

Events that seem a world away to many of us are to him vivid adulthood experiences.

He was climbing a Swiss mountain when his German companion, having heard Hitler's latest speech, suggested that it was time for Hursthouse to "head home" to London.

He did so, past a quickly growing army of armed Swiss citizens, and then the far-less organised French, who had weapons that seemed way out of date.

Hursthouse was on a London bus when he first heard that war had been declared. As an engineer, he worked for the Bristol Aeroplane Company during the conflict. That included a stint in Kenya.

Quickly, he switches back to the present, and his homeland.

In recent days, he has travelled past the Manukau cottage where life began for him in 1915, before his family moved to Wellington where he sailed centreboard dinghies.

But he got sick of capsizing, and on New Year's Day in 1961, Hursthouse christened Firebird, the fixed-keel Flying Fifteen he built when there were only a couple of others in the country.

The seven-metre boats (with a waterline length of 15 feet, thus the name), were from the board of Uffa Fox, the post-war British designer who sailed his boats with the Duke of Edinburgh.

Fantail is Hursthouse's second Flying Fifteen, and undoubtedly his last.

"I'll keep it for plain sailing," he said.

"Monday could well have been its last race ... you never know. Winning would certainly be a very good excuse to stop it altogether ... except for cruising in light weather."

Monday's race, he says, was "just perfect."

But not, it must be added, the most perfect sailing day. Such things just can't be compared.

"That's pure journalese," he scolds. "How could you compare it to the open coast of East Africa, being in a canoe with an outrigger, when the only dry things you had were in a bag on the masthead. That was great fun."

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