At the marina family, friends and fellow sailors warmly applauded the remarkably fresh looking pair as they secured the little boat to the quay. After twelve months Berrimilla was home. She had safely delivered her crew through the storms and mountainous seas of the Indian and Southern Oceans, around the notorious Capes Horn and Good Hope. For the pretty 28 year old lady a rest might have seemed in order but Berrimilla will not rest for long. In just six days she will be heading back out through those same Sydney Heads, as part of the 2005 Rolex Sydney Hobart fleet.

You see, for WHITWORTH and CROZIER the circumnavigation, sailing those thousands of miles, at sea week after week, was merely a means to an end.

'Our project was to sail three races in one year - the 2004 Rolex Sydney Hobart, the Fastnet [where they came second in their division] and the 2005 Rolex Sydney Hobart, all on our own bottom - so we haven't quite finished the job yet,' says WHITWORTH.

They have been lucky, too, that the weather of the last few days has made for a quick trip up the coast from Hobart. Not that CROZIER is a novice to squeaking past deadlines. When he and wife Jeanne bought their own cruising boat back from Greece they got to Sydney just three weeks before Jeanne gave birth to son Luke.

There were some hairy moments this trip. Twice Berrimilla found herself with her mast in the water. At one point, south of New Zealand, she was to all intents and purposes inverted in seas that rose higher than the tip of her mast.

Tense times indeed, so how do two blokes, one in his fifties the other ten years older, get by week after week without throttling each other? Oddly, in a box ten metres long and about two wide, they did not see too much of each other.

'I'm a bit of a nomad. I like passage making and the people you meet when you stop. It was really hard when we were sailing past places like Buenos Aires and Montevideo.

Now the deadline is Boxing Day and even though they have just stepped off the boat you get the feeling the two adventurers can't wait to be back out on the water.

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