Chapter 6

The Last Voyage and Loss of the Trimaran Bucks
Fizz and the Loss of her Entire Crew in the
Fastnet Race of 1979

When I was preparing my trimaran Whisky Jack for the 1979 Azores and Back Race I learnt that a friend of mine, Richard Pendred, who some years before had caught the ‘multihull bug,’ had recently bought the 38-foot trimaran Bucks Fizz. At that time, I was a solicitor practising in London and Richard was the brother-in-law of a good client of mine. Bucks Fizz was designed by Dick Newick and was a near but slightly smaller sister ship to his Three Cheers. Bucks Fizz was also painted bright primrose yellow and shared the same distinctive large turtle deck between the three hulls. She had been built the year before and was new and untried. The first owner and builder of the boat had entered her in some short inshore races but she had never undertaken any longer trips offshore.

Having sailed and raced monohulls for many years, Richard’s first venture with multihulls was with an Iroquois catamaran called Catawampus which he raced with some success. He then bought a 35-foot Kelsall designed trimaran called Runaround. She had been built on the Isle of Mann by Nick Keig and was well known under her original name, Three Legs of Mann. She was a very fast boat and in her Nick Keig had won the 35-foot class in the 1974 Round Britain and Ireland Race and was first overall in the 1975 Azores & Back Race. In 1978 Richard sold Runaround and bought the larger and faster Bucks Fizz. Richard’s life was all about racing boats and he was a very competitive sailor.

After arriving back in England from the Azores, I entered Whisky Jack for the multihull section of the Fastnet Race which was to start in August of that year. It was the first time that multihulls had been allowed to participate and I was delighted when I found out that Richard was also proposing to take part with his newly acquired Bucks Fizz. It would have been a good race for the two yellow trimarans. Bucks Fizz was a much faster, but untried, boat while Whisky Jack, which had crossed the Atlantic twice, was well-travelled and proven but slower.

The multihull race was fixed to begin after the main fleet had left Cowes and a start was arranged by the Multihull Offshore Racing and Cruising Association (MOCRA) to take place off Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight at four o’clock in the afternoon of the main race start.

A few weeks before the start date for the Fastnet, I withdrew my entry from the race. Looking back on it now I am not really sure why but I began to have bad feelings about the whole thing – a premonition would be too strong a word – but something niggled me about taking Whisky Jack out into the Atlantic and the Fastnet rock at that time. To rationalise my decision, I put it about that my partners would not let me take more time off work, having already been absent from the office for eight weeks during the Azores Race earlier that year. My crew, who had been with me to and from the Azores, were clearly very disappointed.

After my withdrawal, I was asked by MOCRA if I would go to Yarmouth and supervise the multihull start. This was to include checking that all entrants complied with the MOCRA safety rules and to see the boats off.

I arrived in Yarmouth on the morning of the start not knowing whether any other boats apart from Bucks Fizz would turn up. Soon after midday, whilst the main Fastnet fleet made its way down the Solent then through the narrows at Hurst Fort and out into the English Channel, I spied the unmistakable sight of a yellow trimaran weaving and dancing its way towards us. Whilst waiting for her to arrive I listened to the BBC Radio Shipping Forecast broadcast at two o’clock so I could give the crew the latest weather information. The forecast predicted ‘South westerly winds, force four to five increasing to force six to seven for a time.’ This was nothing to worry about and pretty well what to expect for the sea areas to which the boats were heading.

Bucks Fizz arrived and picked up a mooring off Yarmouth Pier. I was taken out in the yacht club’s launch to be greeted by an ebullient Richard who was in ecstatic form, geared up for what was his first proper race in his new boat. He introduced me to his crew and handed me a crew list, a MOCRA race requirement, with the names and contact details of all on board.

I must admit that I found the boat in a pretty shambolic state with loose gear, food and clothes all over the cabin floor and on the bunks. However, it must be remembered that multihulls, unlike monohulls, do not heel over when at sea and it is not so necessary to store all gear securely. Richard did admit that they had not had time to store things properly. I went through a check list with him to ensure that they had on board flares, life jackets, charts and navigation equipment, anchor and cable, emergency location beacon (EPIRB) and the other rule requirements. Everything seemed in order, although I do recall I was concerned that the life raft was lying loose in the cockpit and that there did not appear to be any fairleads or bow roller from which to lay out an anchor, which was itself stored on the cabin floor. I do not believe there was any sea anchor. I was also a bit taken aback as it became apparent that the crew did not know each other, nor had they been on the boat before. Apart from Richard, none of them had any experience of sailing multihulls. I did talk to Richard on the foredeck about this whilst out of hearing of the others but Richard, who was all fired-up rearing to go, looked around him and seeing that no other boats had arrived for the start told me he intended to set off and sail after the Fastnet fleet whatever I said, even if he was alone and I refused his entry.

Richard Pendred, owner and skipper of Bucks Fizz

There was nothing I could do to stop him if he decided to go and there was no way for anyone to know what was waiting for them out in the Irish Sea. The forecast gave no hint of a building storm and I considered that Bucks Fizz technically complied with the letter of the MOCRA safety regulations.

I said goodbye to the crew and told Richard that we would fire a starting gun at four o’clock. The boatman took me ashore. No other multihull arrived, so at four o’clock the gun was fired. Bucks Fizz sailed jauntily across the line with all sail set heading west down the Solent in a light south westerly breeze. She looked beautiful in the afternoon sun as she dipped and danced and disappeared through the Hurst narrows. This was the last time anyone on land was to see Bucks Fizz. I watched her go with a mixture of anxiety and jealousy. Anxious as to whether they really should be going but also wishing it was me in Whisky Jack who was sailing with them.

Bucks Fizz

A few days later I listened to the news coming in from the race with growing apprehension and alarm, as did everyone in the country and around the world. After the start in relatively calm conditions, a large depression, known as low ‘Y’, formed over the Atlantic during the Saturday of the start and began to develop during the next day, Sunday 12 August. On Monday, this low ‘Y’ began to intensify and move north eastwards toward the south of Ireland. By Tuesday it was centred over Wexford and the Meteorological Office was receiving reports of gale force winds, with the strongest right over the area where the race fleet was.

The Meteorological Office assessed the maximum wind force as Storm Force 10 on the Beaufort Scale but many race competitors believed the winds reached Violent Storm Force 11 (one Force on the scale below a Hurricane). Over the two days of 13 and 14 August, out of the 306 yachts taking part in the official race 5 were sunk, 100 suffered knock downs and 75 were flipped upside down. 15 sailors died and only 86 boats finished the race. The rest limped into various harbours in Wales, Ireland, Devon and Cornwall.

Rescue efforts began on the evening of 14 August, by which time the winds had abated to a Force 9 gale. Royal Navy ships, RAF Nimrod jets, helicopters, lifeboats, a Dutch warship and a number of tugs, trawlers and tankers all took part. 125 yachtsmen were picked up.

During the rescue operation there was no mention at first of Bucks Fizz but then on 15 August, a fishing boat went to investigate the upturned hull of a yellow trimaran which had been sighted south of the Old Head of Kinsale. They found the boat upside down with no life raft on board and with its centreboard still in the lowered position. The bodies of three crew members were found in the water nearby and the body of the skipper, Richard Pendred, was later found in the yacht’s life raft. None were wearing life jackets although three were wearing safety harnesses. The bodies were recovered and landed at Barry in South Wales.

It was not until much later, once crews and boats had returned to land, that reports emerged of Bucks Fizz being seen at eight o’clock in the evening on 13 August by two yachts taking part in the race, Battlecry and Condor of Bermuda. They were both some 45 miles short of the Fastnet rock. Their crews reported the trimaran as moving very fast in 20-25 knots of wind under full sail. At half past three in the morning of Tuesday 14 August, with winds gusting at over 60 knots, the yacht Pepsi, lying a-hull having lost her rudder, reported red flares close by. At eight o’clock the next morning her crew saw a capsized yellow trimaran near to them, presumed to be Bucks Fizz.

A few days after the bodies had been recovered I received a telephone call from the South Wales Police asking me, as the last person to have been on board Bucks Fizz before she set sail, whether I was prepared to go down to Barry to identify some of the bodies which they had found and which had no identification on them. They were believed to have come from the trimaran. I agreed to do this and hoped this would avoid Richard’s widow having to go and undertake such a distressing task.

I travelled to South Wales the next day and was able to identify the bodies of Richard and two of his crew. It was a troubling and traumatic experience, the first time I had ever done such a thing and, looking at the bodies laid out in the mortuary, brought home to me that it could easily have been myself and my crew, Julian Mustoe and Roger Hill, lying there instead.

What happened to Bucks Fizz is pure speculation but the conclusion of a report carried out by MOCRA into the incident is that Bucks Fizz capsized by wave action whilst lying a-hull with no sails set. Whilst I believe it unlikely that Bucks Fizz could have survived in those circumstances, a contributory factor to the capsize might have been the fact that her centreboard was in the lowered position when she was found. This lowered centreboard would have prevented the boat from sliding sideways with the waves and may have acted to trip her up whilst the boat was being pushed down the face of a wave. I am sure Richard was aware that it was considered best practice for the centreboard to be raised in these conditions but it may be they were simply caught unawares by the speed with which the wind and seas got up. If the seas then become too large to continue to lie beam on, a sea anchor should have been launched from the bow to attempt to keep the boat’s bows facing the oncoming seas.

Battlecry and Condor were two fast yachts and they would have been amongst the leaders of the fleet, so Bucks Fizz must have sailed very fast to have caught them up and I hope that Richard achieved his aim of rounding the Fastnet Rock before the capsize.

For my part I do not consider that my trimaran Whisky Jack would have been any luckier and she would undoubtedly have capsized in those conditions. In this case I too, along with my two crew members, may well have perished.

*

Today there is a Fastnet Race Memorial at Holy Trinity Church in Cowes on the Isle of Wight, on which is listed 19 names, the 15 official race competitors who perished plus the names of Richard Pendred, Olivia Davidson, John Dix and Peter Pickering, the four crew members of Bucks Fizz.

In 2003 the islanders of Cape Clear Island in Ireland erected a stone memorial with the names of the 15 official competitors who were lost in the race. Some years later Richard Pendred’s son, Guy, who was twelve at the time of his father’s death, arranged for the names of the crew of Bucks Fizz to be added to those already engraved on the stone. Guy, his mother and his brother Mark, attended a memorial service in 2015 to remember the victims of the race. Mark was only eight years old at the time of the race.

Guy Pendred has told me that his father was initially very keen to take Guy with him on Bucks Fizz for the race (Guy’s mother was not at all sure this was a good idea). However, Richard decided against this on the basis that the rules of the official RORC Fastnet race prohibited persons under 16 from taking part. Whilst Bucks Fizz was not strictly bound by such rules (the MOCRA regulations contained no such prohibition) Richard thought he should abide by the RORC rules. So Guy stayed ashore.