Will Oxley

And by that I mean that he decided he should sail around the world upwind and so go around Cape Horn,

from east to west and then sail upwind all the way through the Southern Ocean and then come back up through the Atlantic.

Yeah, it's not the most sensible of ideas.

But so Che did this and he held the record.

And then some years later, he decided that it was such a good idea that he would organise a race for amateurs and they would... Amateurs?

Well, he wanted to set it up as a business.

So there were two of these races that had previously been held until I came into the picture.

And so the one I was signing up for was in 2000, 2001.

And these people were paying, at that time, I remember it to be about 24,000 pounds.

So at that stage, it would be at least 50,000 Australian dollars for the chance to bang your head against a brick wall for 180 days.

And worse still, they were looking for one professional skipper to be in charge of these amateurs who didn't necessarily have to know how to sail when they signed up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it was interesting.

I put my hand up and put in the paperwork, but I had heard nothing.

And then along came the 1998 Sydney Hobart.

I did that.

We got out of it.

And I remember thinking, actually...

I've got, I may have many faults, but one of the things I am quite good at is being calm in a crisis and doing the right thing.