The first OSTAR

In his biography Ewen Southby-Tailyour uses Blondie’s entries from his ‘social log’ to describe his experience of the first Observer Single-handed Trans-Atlantic Race (OSTAR) in June 1960.

I look at the sail, my delicious Chinese lug-rig that I tried out for the first time half-scale in a pram dinghy nine months ago and have been in love with ever since. Is it really capable of crossing the Atlantic? I’ve never even crossed the Channel with it: never had it out in open water: never weathered a gale: whatever happened to all those exhausting trials that used to be bracketed over a period of several months – my