Programme 4
Richard Tudor
- Sian with Richard Tudor
Brought up in Pwllheli, Richard Tudor started his sailing at an early age. As a youngster he had his own Mirror dinghy, ten feet long. When he was competing in sailing events around Wales, his parents had to strap his boat to the top of their car to transport him to wherever the regattas were.
One early inspiration for Richard was the yachtsman Francis Chicester, who sailed solo around the world in 1966-7 in his 40-foot yacht Gipsy Moth. Richard’s imagination was sparked, and many years later he would himself circumnavigate the globe - although he did it in charge of a crew, and in a 60-foot boat!
Richard has three times skippered yachts in the world’s toughest yacht race, the round-the-world challenge going westward, regarded by sailors as the wrong way. Each race was very eventful : in 1992-3 Richard was captain of the yacht British Steel II which lost its mast halfway across the Southern Ocean, but still managed to make it to Hobart, and eventually to finish the race. On Richard’s third attempt in 2000 he captained a brand new catamaran, the Team Philips, made out of carbon fibre and worth £2.5 million. Unfortunately, seven hundred miles out into the Atlantic the ship broke up, and Richard and the crew had to be rescued by a passing vessel.
Although Richard’s love of the sea has not diminished, his feet are now more firmly planted in his beloved Pwllheli, where he teaches vocational courses in seamanship.
9:00PM Tuesday
Repeated on S4C Digidol 9:00PM Saturday
with English Subtitles