His first attempt in 1993 was cut short when his 92-foot (28-meter) catamaran Enza struck a submerged object in the southern ocean. But in 1994, he tried again with co-skipper Robin Knox-Johnston. Despite the icebergs and the building-size waves, they established a new mark of 74 days, 22 hours, and 17 minutes, which has since been bettered by a Frenchman, Olivier de Kersauson.
Weary yet fulfilled, Blake abandoned long-distance racing and turned his attentions to the America's Cup. The Kiwis' 5-0 victory over Dennis Conner and the United States in San Diego in 1995 was one of the most remarkable performances in the Cup's long history.
Blake was one of the first to realize what a tremendous economic opportunity hosting the event would be for New Zealand. Despite resistance and cost concerns, he pushed for Auckland's port to be overhauled and refurbished at a cost of approximately $40 million to house the challenger syndicates.
The result was an unqualified success off and on the water, as Team New Zealand, with Blake in a purely administrative role, swept the Italian team Prada, 5-0, last year to defend the biggest prize in yachting.
New Passion
Blake's death is a huge blow to his small country and to the global sailing community. It also represents a missed opportunity for the global environmental movement.
After spending the first three decades of his sailing career obsessively chasing trophies, he was intent on spending his final years promoting awareness of ecological causes, with an emphasis on the precarious state of the world's bodies of water.
With his long experience in attracting and satisfying sponsors to his competitive sailing projects, Blake had access to sources of funding that most start-up ecologists did not.
"Defending the Cup is nothing compared to defending the environment," he said last year.
After stepping down from his post as syndicate chief for Team New Zealand last year, he assumed leadership of the Cousteau Society. Frustrated by administrative obstacles, he soon left to form his own organization, Blakexpeditions, backed by the United Nations. The group's main objective was to produce films and television shows targeted primarily at the young.
"If you can reach the young, you can reach the people who will be making the decisions about the environment in the years ahead," Blake said. "But we've got to do it in a way that keeps them from reaching for the remote control."
He planned to spend five years in the world's most important and fragile aquatic environments, filming and absorbing.
Blake and his crew spent two months in Antarctica this year, and they had just completed a two-month stay in the Amazon region, monitoring global warming and pollution, when his lifetime of seafaring abruptly and tragically came to an end.
Copyright 2001 International Herald Tribune
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