Yachting: Lion back to mark famous race victory

Sarah-Jane Blake, daughter of Sir Peter Blake, on the yacht she first sailed in as a baby. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Twenty-five years after their historic victory in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race, Lion New Zealand have announced they will compete again.

Crewing on board the famous Kiwi yacht will be Sarah-Jane Blake, whose father, the late Sir Peter Blake, skippered Lion New Zealand to victory in the gruelling 1984 race.

The 24m yacht was built for Sir Peter, and with sailing in the Sydney to Hobart, Lion New Zealand was his entry in the 1985-86 Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race.

It won't be his daughter's first time sailing on the yacht.

She was just a baby when in 1985 she made the epic journey from New Zealand to England for the aluminium sloop's delivery voyage with her parents and 700 disposable nappies.

This time, Blake, 26, will be the cook on board Lion New Zealand for the notorious 628 nautical mile race.

She admits she has no previous experience as a cook, but says when you are dealing with freeze-dried food, there isn't really much to it. She believes the biggest challenge will be staying upright while she throws the meals together. "It will be acrobatic cooking," she laughed.

While sailing is obviously in the blood, Blake had her first taste of off-shore sailing in over a decade when she took part in the Auckland to Noumea race in July.

It was not until the return voyage that she fully realised what she had got herself in to when they sailed into a hurricane.

Hunkered down against 80-knot winds and towering waves, Blake was pitched overboard - and underwater - for a terrifying moment at the zenith of the storm. "It was pretty rough, but extremely exhilarating."

Lion New Zealand skipper Alistair Moore delights in telling her, "Sydney to Hobart will be a lot worse."

It was Moore, who was a member of Sir Peter's Seamaster crew on that fateful journey on the Amazon in 2001, and Lion Maritime Trustee William Goodfellow who first came up with the idea to sail in this year's Sydney to Hobart race to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the historic win.

"William and myself saw it as a natural thing 25 years on," said Moore.

Blake is not the only offspring of the original crew who led Lion to victory back in 1984. Conrad Gundry, son of Simon Gundry, and Sam Cray, son of Godfrey Cray, are also involved with the campaign. Other yachting legends such as Grant Dalton and Kevin Shoebridge were also on board Lion New Zealand in the 1984 win. Only 46 of the 152 starters crossed the finish line, in what is said to have been one of the toughest Sydney to Hobart races.

While Moore admits they don't have much of a shot of repeating the heroics of 1984, he says they are not entering just to take a nice trip down memory lane.

"The only way we'll win it is if there's a hurricane. But we won't be there just to make up numbers, we want to do the history of the boat proud," he said. "We'll have the right sails on board for every weather and we'll be pushing the boat hard.

"We're not rock stars, but 70 per cent of the crew have serious offshore experience and we believe we can make a good fist of it."