"If anyone wants to get depressed about this, come and see me, and we'll do it together." That's what, in true blue Kiwi fashion, Sir Peter Blake told his crew after the mast snapped in half on Ceramco in the middle of the Atlantic during the first New Zealand team attempt at a Whitbread Round The World race.
The crew had put their hearts and souls into the attempt and were gutted about the mast failure. It says a lot about Blake that he talked the crew into jury-rigging the boat and continuing on to Cape Town anyway. He was an outstanding leader - and that comes across strongly in this feature-length documentary about his life.
It offers all the ingredients of an excellent blockbuster movie - exciting action sequences on the high seas, the determination of an underdog, nail-biting competitive racing, triumph over adversity, revealing and heartwarming family scenes, compelling characters (wife Pippa Blake really is one strong woman), and tragedy.
Blakey, as he was fondly known, was one of the most charismatic sportsmen and public figures New Zealand has known, and his family wanted to create something memorable the public could share.
Here, they've collaborated with director Mark Albiston and many friends, colleagues and family, to create a collage of interviews and footage from public and personal archives which follows the arc of Blake's rise to his death in December 2001 at the hands of pirates on the Amazon River while monitoring environmental change for the United Nations.
