Warren Brown

(s/v War Baby) for sailing the formidable WAR BABY to Antarctica as related by John Gore-Grimes on pages 48 to 58 of FF 1987/1. In 1979 WAR BABY, then named TENACIOUS and owned by Ted Turner, had won the disastrous 1979 Fastnet Race. Designed by Sparkman & Stephens, she is 61ft long with an 80ft mast, and built in aluminium. She was sailed from Warren’s home in Bermuda to Punta Arenas in Chile via the Caribbean, Panama, and the Galapagos. It is necessary to read John Gore-Grimes’s account to appreciate their Antarctica voyage, where 50 knot winds are the norm and 70 knots not unusual. Returning via the South Atlantic, they visited the Falkland Islands where they met 1986 Barton Cup winners Mark and Amanda Wilson, and needed the assistance from a British warship to avoid going aground on a lee shore when the wind suddenly changed direction 180° and, in John's words, “blew like hell”.