KEY POINTS:
New Zealand yachtie Graham Dalton thought his wife was on a school camp during the first leg of a round-the-world solo yacht race.
Instead, she was having a mastectomy.
Robbie Dalton was diagnosed with breast cancer in November after returning to New Zealand following the start of the Velux 5 Oceans race in Bilbao, Spain, on October 29.
Dalton made it to Fremantle in Western Australia yesterday after 71 days, 15 hours and 34 minutes at sea. He is the brother of Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton.
His wife's ordeal during his absence was all the more poignant as the 15m yacht he is racing, A Southern Man AGD, is named for his son, Anthony (Tony) Graham Dalton, who died of cancer aged 23.
"Coming in this morning I have one regret, and that is Tony isn't here to be with me because he tried so hard to stay alive," Dalton said.
"I would give this all away if I could get him back again but I can't. Hopefully wherever he is, he is proud of his dad."
Dalton said he was not told of his wife's illness until after she had been operated on. Robbie Dalton said she made a "cold and calculating" decision not to tell him.
"Graham was off the coast of South Africa ...
"If I'd told him that I was about to have a mastectomy, then I know that he would have felt that he had to pull out, go into Cape Town, come home and that would mean the end of his chance of ever completing the race," she said.
Robbie Dalton finally told her husband after receiving her histology results, which showed she would not have to undergo chemotherapy or radiation treatment.
This is Dalton's second tilt at the race; in 2003, racing Hexagon, he had to pull out as his mother was dying.
Robbie Dalton knew this would be his last shot at finishing it.
"I told Graham I was going on a school camp and out of cellphone range for three days. Well, I had to explain where the hell I was," she said.
"I was terrified that something would happen under the anaesthetic and that Katie [their 12-year-old daughter] would just be left, and I hadn't had a chance to explain to Graham why I was doing what I had done.
"And the fact that I was lying to him. That was just terrible."
Dalton did not think he would survive a massive storm on Christmas Eve. The wind was at 80 knots and rising when the wind gear stopped as he battled waves of up to 18m.
"It was horrific. I don't think many yachtsmen have been in a storm like that and survived. Eighty knots and still rising - that is a lot of breeze.
"But we came through it. Storms at sea are like storms on land. They pass, as long as you can hang in there, and we hung in there."
The next 12 days will be spent fixing the badly damaged yacht before Dalton sets out on the second leg, to Norfolk, Virginia.
- NZPA
