BOOK REVIEW: By Rich du Moulin
Tapio Lehtinen (“Tapio L”) is the Storm Trysail Club member who you may never have met but who has raced around the world 3.5 times! Tapio, who hails from Finland, joined his friend Tapio Saavalainen (“Tapio S” lives in Washington, DC) at Block Island Race Week in 2023. A few years earlier, Tapio S and Rich du Moulin sponsored Tapio L for Storm Trysail Club. We have never had a member more qualified than Tapio L, who sailed his first Whitbread Around-the -World in 1981 as a 23-year-old watch captain.
In the following years, Tapio raced everything including 6 Meters and offshore yachts. His kids represented Finland in the Olympics and brought back a medal. Then, in 2018 Tapio, entered the Golden Globe Race (GGR) 50th Anniversary Race solo-sailing his 35-foot Sparkman & Stephens Asteria (predecessor of the famous Swan 36). For this race, technology was limited to equipment and materials available in the original 1968 race. Navigation was celestial, sails were Dacron, and hulls had full length keels and attached rudders. Of 18 starters, he was the fifth and final boat to cross the finish line in a staggeringly slow time of 322 days, a week longer than Sir Robin Knox-Johnston in 1968-69. Tapio’s persistence was amazing. Asteria’s anti-fouling paint lost its mojo early in the circumnavigation resulting in barnacles that could not be scraped off (sharks did not help). Reduced to a maximum speed of 3-4 knots, Tapio just kept sailing!
In 2022 Tapio once again set off in the GGR aboard Asteria and was in the leading pair when, suddenly, in the Southern Ocean the boat flooded and sank. Tapio was picked up by the eventual winner Kirsten Neuschafer and dropped off on a merchant ship.
Of course one would assume Tapio had had enough of circumnavigations, but the following year he was off again in the fully crewed OGR-Ocean Globe Race on his S&S Swan 55 Galiana. Like the GGR, the OGR was restricted to the technologies of the original 1972 Whitbread.
Over the years, my short-handed racing has led to new friendships ranging from Rich Wilson and Bjorn Johnson to Sir Robin Knox-Johnston and folks with French names. What has always amazed me is the sociability of these unique sailors. It’s hard to comprehend how people happy to be alone for months at a time, are so relaxed and chatty onshore. Upon completing his first solo circumnavigation in 313 days, Robin was interviewed by a psychiatrist who, after the session, regretfully reported that Robin was “distressingly normal.”
When you read Tapio’s book, not only will you find someone else who is “distressingly normal” and also chatty and entertaining. His adventures and stories are not normal! His ideas for innovations that enable safer and more fun short-handed sailing are useful for racers or cruisers, such as foot pedal steering inside a protected hard dodger. Please read this wonderful story of one of our most interesting Storm Trysail Club members. Link to his book