Yachting: Ironman unflinching in the face of danger

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

The body of Curtis Blewitt is a mosaic of cuts and bruises. But the AmericaOne bowman is not happy unless he is on the edge of a precipice.

Blewitt thrives at the top of a 30m mast in a gale, on the point of a bow slamming through a wave, or at the peak of a 6000m mountain.

Yesterday, in AmericaOne's 34s victory over Prada, he was toiling under a torrent of seawater and swinging from the end of the spinnaker pole. Three days ago he was smacked in the mouth by a shackle and hung helplessly at the top of the mast as his fellow bowman was smashed against the rig.

Blewitt says nothing bad has ever happened to him in a sailboat race - in his book, bad must equal death.

"I've been knocked out a couple of times. But it's part of the job. It's the same when I go mountaineering," he said.

Last summer, Blewitt knocked off a couple of peaks in Ecuador, among them the 6267m Mt Chimborazo.

He is an experienced Cup and round-the-world bow and mid-bowman, but Blewitt could do nothing as crewmate Greg Prussia "swung like a tetherball" out from the top of the mast and crashed back - twice - during Saturday's horror race for AmericaOne.

Prussia was taken to hospital, but he was lucky to escape with severe bruising to an arm and leg. However he will not be back on the boat for the rest of the Louis Vuitton Cup Final.

The two crewmen were up the mast together in 30 knots to clean up a broken halyard before the start of the race.

"Greg was on his way down, but when he got to the hounds 20 feet below me, we hit a big wave. He lost his grip and swung out, then hit the mast really hard.

"He managed to grab on but he was stunned. The next wave it happened all over again.

"I felt really bad because there was nothing I could do - it's a horrible feeling. But there are days when we know it's in our job description."

During the race, Blewitt was pouring blood over his shirt and the foredeck after gashing his mouth and face on a flying shackle. Skipper Paul Cayard described him as "a brave tuna fish."

"It just added insult to injury on a pretty bad day," Blewitt said. "It was like playing two rugby games in one day.

During the last round-the-world race, Blewitt was almost killed at the top of the mast in a night snowstorm.

Sailing on Cayard's EF Language boat, Blewitt scaled the rig to untangle the spinnaker, the yacht broached, and in the panic, the crew cut the halyard he was on.

"I survived, but I was pretty well shaken up," he said. "It was nothing a six-hour nap couldn't fix."