Peter Blake

Less than three months later, Blake asked Pippa to marry him. They were married the same year, 1979. "He proposed to me in a marina in Miami in Florida," Pippa told the Sunday Telegraph, "and I just said yes straight away. I didn't hesitate. I think I'd passed a test. I knew right from the start that I was sort of sharing Peter with the team. Right up to the moment he was killed, there was always a team around Peter. For our honeymoon we sailed from here [Emsworth] to New Zealand—me and seven guys!"

In 1981-82, Blake competed in the third Whitbread race, this time as captain. The boat was called Ceramco New Zealand, and this one, too lost its mast during the race. But Blake and his resourceful crew managed to build a make-shift mast and get underway again within 24 hours of the mishap. They made it to Cape Town, where they put in a new mast, and went on to finish second in the race.

Blake entered the fourth Whitbread race in 1985 as captain of the Lion New Zealand, and again did not win. But the fifth Whitbread race, in 1989, was a charm for Blake; his boat, Steinlager II, won all six legs of the race, winning the overall race by only minutes.

Blake described life aboard the Steinlager II, on which there were no showers, and few changes of clothes for the crew of 15, to the BBC: "You don't notice the smells or whatever that develop because everyone's the same. But when you get into port and you go away for 24 hours and come back, well you see the look on people's face when they come down below for the first time, they just about fall over backwards, the stench is just terrible. You don't wash, see, in the southern ocean, you might not change your underwear for three weeks, and you get a bit of a layer of grease and goo that builds up over you, and you seem to be just fine."

In 1993, Blake sailed around the world with crew-mate Robin Knox-Johnson. The voyage broke the record for the fastest non-stop voyage around the world, and the pair won the Jules Verne trophy for sailing around the world in under 80 days. They circled the globe in 74 days, 22 hours, 17 minutes, and 30 seconds, in 1993.