Call Me Ted

by Ted Turner

  Conditions were still moderate when we rounded the rock around 6:30 on Monday evening, but as night fell we could feel the wind building and the seas starting to rise. I told the crew to eat dinner and get their rest, as we were in for a long, tough night. Winds of the sort they were predicting are always dangerous, but in this body of water they would be particularly devastating. The Atlantic Ocean can reach depths of thousands of feet but in the Irish Sea, where we were racing, it shoals to just a couple of hundred feet. Shallow water causes waves to build up steeper and deeper. With proper sail management, you can usually handle the wind—it’s the steep waves that pose most of the problems. There was no doubt that the weather was deteriorating by 8:00 P.M. when I handed the wheel over to Gary Jobson for the next four-hour watch. He did a great job during that stretch while I stayed below and tried to get as much rest as possible. I knew the situation could be very different by midnight when it would be time to change watches again.

  A TED STORY

  “His Finest Moment”

  —Gary Jobson

  Ted had the watch from 12:00 A.M.to 4:00 A.M. and that was the absolute worst of the storm. I kept popping up from belowdecks to see what I could do to help and he kept telling me to get back down and get some rest. That was the way he liked to sail—he wanted the helmsman who was not on watch to take it easy because when it came time to take the wheel he had to be mentally sharp. But that night was never restful—it was hell down below. It was cold and wet—we were thrown all over the place and everybody was getting sick.

  At one point, when the wind got really hard—like 60 knots—we had to get the mainsail down and Ted did let me come up and help with that. It was quite a feat of seamanship for us to get that sail wrestled, corralled, and tied down. With the mainsail down the sailing got a little easier. We used a small storm trysail—a triangular storm sail—and that worked well. During those four hours down below, Bowker was monitoring the radio. We heard Mayday calls all night—it was just bedlam on the radio—and we saw flares going off in the distance.

  I came back up at 4:00 A.M.and Ted went below, completely exhausted. Handing the wheel over he said, “Don’t let anybody else steer! You’re the only helmsman!” On this next shift the winds started to die down, probably to about 50 knots, but the waves were still gigantic. In a storm like that, the wind makes you weary and the spray hurts when it hits you, but what separated Fastnet from anything else I’ve ever experienced were the short, steep waves. I can still remember these big thirty-five-footers breaking over my head and crashing into the cockpit and thinking, “How am I ever going to be able to describe this to anybody? How is anybody ever going to understand what this is all about?”

  Ted was really tough that night. I was watching him and he was so strong that I didn’t get frightened. I thought, “If he’s all right, then things must be okay.” The harder it got, the better he was. I think it was his finest moment.

  Conditions were really rough during that midnight to 4:00 A.M. watch. After the race, some people said the waves were as high as forty feet. I’m not sure I ever saw any that high but I’d say they were averaging eighteen to twenty feet and some were probably thirty or thirty-five. The wind was blowing so hard that the top six to ten feet of some of these were breaking as if they were coming up on a beach. The watch crew clipped on their safety harnesses that were attached to a side rail where they would all huddle together. When the waves broke on us they were all but submerged. Despite the fact that Tenacious weighed about seventy thousand pounds, she was still thrown about twenty to thirty feet to leeward when the bigger waves hit. A couple of times we were knocked almost flat, but I had great confidence in the strength and integrity of our boat. (That doesn’t mean something couldn’t have broken. In fact, Tenacious was made of aluminum, with plates welded over aluminum ribs, and after the race we saw that several plates had broken and the front of the boat had to be rewelded.)

  Visibility was poor. Not only were we sailing in the dark but the howling wind and rain made it hard to keep your eyes open, and down in the trough of one of these waves, the view ahead was nothing but black. During these early morning hours, the bigger boats had also made the turn and were sailing ahead of us, but most of the smaller boats were still making their way out to Fastnet Rock and that presented a challenge. When we rode up to the top of a wave we could briefly make out the red and green bow lights of oncoming boats and we had to make a split decision about which way to turn the wheel to avoid a collision. I knew that if we ever collided it would be a disaster. I don’t think we ever came closer than two hundred feet or so to an oncoming boat, but with the limited visibility, it was quite a challenge.

  As the storm made the sailing increasingly difficult, precise navigation had become impossible. Fastnet rules banned the use of some of the more advanced navigation technologies so the best we were allowed was a radio direction finder or RDF—a handheld device that uses radio signals to gauge the boat’s location. Peter Bowker was responsible for using our RDF, and at one point, just as he stepped forward on the deck to try to get a reading, a breaking wave sent him flying toward the stern. He crashed so hard against the metal steering wheel that he bent it, and in the process the RDF was broken.

  It was really scary that night, but as dangerous as things became for us, I refused to get too worried. If I had, I might have slowed up—there were eighteen other people aboard and as their skipper I had responsibility—but I felt that our boat was strong enough and I continued to press on. Even at the height of the storm, I was more concerned about winning than I was about dying.

  By the time Jobson’s watch finished at 8:00 A.M., the storm was starting to settle down. He’d had the job of steering us around the Scilly Isles, the final turn before heading back into the Channel and on toward the finish line at Plymouth. In good conditions, you try to make the turn as close to the Scillies as you can. With low visibility and lacking electronic navigation, we took a conservative approach and made a wide pass of the Scillies. We never saw the islands. I was disappointed by how far away we were from them—probably about ten miles and rounding wide cost us some time—but it was the safe thing to do.

  By the end of that shift, around 8:00 A.M., the storm was pretty much over and we were able to get the mainsail back up. The rest of the race was uneventful and we crossed the finish line to Plymouth at about 10:30 on Tuesday night. Relieved to have successfully completed the course, we were hopeful that we’d sailed well enough to win. In contrast, most of the spectators were simply concerned about whether their friends or loved ones had survived. Rescue teams were being dispatched and it became clear that the night had been nearly as disastrous as I had predicted. In the end, nineteen people lost their lives that night—fifteen racers and four people from the crew of a pace boat. During the overnight chaos, all kinds of rumors were being spread, including one that Tenacious was among the boats that were missing. It turned out that when some of the rescue helicopters flew over the fleet, they didn’t see our boat. They assumed the worst, and we were farther ahead than they realized and they didn’t see us because they underestimated our speed.

  A TED STORY

  “Do Not Panic or You Will Die”

  —Teddy Turner

  Under the worst conditions, ocean racing can become a game of survival and the tougher the game is the more Dad likes it. One of the lessons he taught me is that in these situations, “You are in control of your own situation until you give up. Do not panic or you will die.” And that night, he never gave up. I was watching my dad, not just because he was my father, but also because he was the skipper and it made a big impact on me to watch him not be scared.

  We didn’t know really how bad things had been for everyone else until early in the morning after the storm. We were having breakfast and listening to the radio—just a regular commercial station on the stereo—and they started talking about the tragedy of the night before. Everybody got very somber when we pulled into Portsmouth for the finish. T
he docks were crowded with thousands of people with pictures of their kids and their family since a lot of people knew that their child, husband, or family member was out there but they didn’t necessarily know which boat they were on. They’d come up to you and say, “Have you seen this person?” Then the Coast Guard cutter came in and started unloading bodies. Needless to say, this was all pretty daunting for a sixteen-year-old.

  When I woke up Wednesday morning, I was told that Tenacious had finished in second place. As had been the case in 1971, the winner was a smaller boat that came in far behind us but was declared the winner after handicap hours were added to our time. I was very disappointed. Meanwhile, because of the storm and the loss of life, Fastnet had become an international news story. As one of the race’s well known competitors, many in the press wanted to talk to me. I did a live television interview with David Hartman on Good Morning America and spoke to other journalists from around the world.

  During these interviews, I expressed disappointment with our second place finish and when asked about the disaster I explained my feelings that there were several smaller boats in the race that had no business being out there. They were too small to be on a course where storms like this can happen. Bad weather was part of the sport, I explained, and competitors need to be prepared. A couple of times I even commented that the British should be thankful for weather like this, explaining that it was a storm like this one in these very waters that helped keep the Spanish Armada from invading England in the sixteenth century. “If it weren’t for this kind of weather,” I explained to the British press, “you’d all be speaking Spanish!”

  Looking back, I can see why I offended some people. From their perspective, a terrible tragedy had just occurred and they were expecting my tone to be more somber and subdued. From my perspective, my crew and I had just survived an epic race through terrible conditions. I’d barely had time to process everything that had happened and I was merely speaking my mind. These storms happen and sailors who enter these races should be prepared for them.

  I was also frustrated that one of the smaller boats had managed to beat us on an adjusted time and I was preparing to go home when I was told that the judges had made a correction. The skipper of the smaller boat reported that they had never made it to Fastnet Rock—when they crossed the finish line at Plymouth, they hadn’t even completed the course. Tenacious was now declared the winner! Because of the storm, this was not the same kind of celebratory situation we had at the Newport docks two years earlier, but this was a race I had always wanted to win and we had done it in the worst conditions imaginable.

  Some good did come from the Fastnet tragedy. Several studies were conducted and papers written, resulting in new safety standards for the sport. While there have been fatalities in ocean races since then, including six deaths in the 1998 Sydney–Hobart race, yachting is a safer sport than it was prior to Fastnet, and I believe that my frank post-race comments helped stimulate some of the attention on eliminating unsafe boats from these competitions.

  I would later learn that during the time when rumors spread that I was missing, CNN’s newly signed anchor Daniel Schorr was making an appearance on our behalf at a cable trade show. The story of my possible demise was all over but people had no source for accurate updates as events unfolded. Eventually, word got out that I was okay, and when it did, Schorr turned the entire event to our advantage. He explained that when CNN was up and running as the first-ever twenty-four-hour news service, the Fastnet Race was precisely the kind of story we would cover. I liked Dan’s style and I was eager to get back to Atlanta to keep our launch plans moving forward full steam ahead.

  15

  CNN Launch

  When I returned home from the Fastnet Race we were just nine months away from CNN’s launch and everyone was going 90 miles an hour to make it happen. Bunky was retrofitting the country club facilities while Gene Wright and his team of engineers were still making sure we secured and installed all our necessary equipment. Reese Schonfeld and Burt Reinhardt were making hires right and left and our salespeople were trying to sell cable operators and advertisers on this brand-new concept. It was an exciting time.

  The CNN launch phase was particularly intense for me because I knew we were breaking one of the golden rules of start-ups—we were launching a business without sufficient capital to see it through to profitability. The problem was, I also knew I needed to move quickly and that there wouldn’t be many lenders or investors out there who would advance this kind of money considering our lack of experience in news. My only options to raise funds were to sell even more assets (we had already been selling off the billboard and radio businesses to fund our expansion), sell stock, or borrow more money.

  By this time, I had been in and out of banks for years and whenever I dealt with them it was a culture clash. Banks like businesses that are proven, steady, and predictable; they are less comfortable with the unknown and with unproven strategies. At one point, after we acquired WTBS and launched the SuperStation, we were seen as such a high-risk client that we were relegated to working with Citicorp’s special division for highly collateralized, high-interest loans. Before that, we even had to work with a factoring company, to whom we paid a very high rate of interest and put up our receivables and inventory as collateral. They even made weekly checks of our books before giving us our cash. We had somehow survived it all and while it looked like the SuperStation was on a path to profitability, it was still losing several million dollars a year when we decided to move ahead with CNN. We felt the banks would not be receptive to this risky new venture, so I decided to mobilize with the resources we could generate on our own.

  By this time, we owned both the Braves and the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks (which I bought from Tom Cousins in 1977). Either one of these would have fetched a sizable price but they were too important to the SuperStation strategically for me to consider a sale. With our radio and billboard businesses already sold, our most valuable and least strategic asset that remained was WRET in Charlotte. Purchasing that station eight years before had cost me about $1 million. Now, with the improvements we had made and the growth of the television marketplace, the business was valued at about $20 million. We reached an agreement to sell to Westinghouse at that price, and once the deal closed and the FCC approved the license transfer, these funds would go directly toward CNN’s launch. We would have enough money to get on the air, but nowhere near as much as we’d need to survive what was sure to be several years of losses before we made it into the black.

  As a student of military history, I likened the CNN launch strategy to Irwin Rommel’s desert campaign during World War II. On several occasions, the German general attacked the British when he knew he didn’t have enough fuel to conduct an entire offensive. What he intended to do was strike when they weren’t expecting it, overrun their lines, and then capture their fuel dumps. At that point he could refuel his Panzers and continue the offensive. My vision for financing CNN was similar. If we had enough cash to get on the air and could somehow get through our first year of operation, people would see that this was a viable and valuable service. Once the concept was proven, we would have easier access to capital. Even in the worst case, I figured that if we ran out of money after launching the channel and getting some distribution, we would have created a valuable asset that we could sell to a competitor. The key for us was to get started.

  Shortly after making the decision to move forward with CNN, we negotiated a deal with RCA to reserve transponder space on SATCOM III, a new satellite they had built to meet the rising demand. Cable operators currently receiving SATCOM I, the satellite that was delivering the SuperStation and HBO, would be able to get a signal from SATCOM III without having to buy any new receiving equipment. A slot on SATCOM III was vital to CNN. No matter how hard we worked on our programming plans, advertising sales, or distribution deals with cable operators, without a transponder, we couldn’t transmit. Yet despite the satellite’s importance, I really didn’t pa
y much attention to its launch in December 1979 as I assumed it to be a routine procedure. Then RCA called to tell us that SATCOM III had disappeared. They didn’t know whether it blew up or what, but regardless, the satellite was gone, and unless we found a substitute, our plan for CNN was in jeopardy. Amidst all the efforts to get CNN on the air, it never occurred to me that something might go wrong with the satellite. The fact that RCA owned NBC—a potential CNN competitor—concerned me, but when I headed south for SORC races, I left feeling fully confident that our team would be able to work out a solution with RCA.

  I was racing in the Bahamas in February when I got a call from Terry McGuirk. In short, he let me know that RCA did not have any workable solutions. We had asked them to free up an extra slot on SATCOM I, but the best they could offer was a transponder on one of their other communications satellites. This would not work for us since cable operators couldn’t get the CNN signal without buying a second receiver. We were having enough trouble getting them to sign up for CNN, so there was no way they’d invest in a second dish just for our signal. If this was the best RCA could do, CNN—now less than four months from launch—was dead in the water.

  I flew to Atlanta immediately while our team and outside legal counsel worked frantically on a solution. At first glance, RCA appeared to hold the cards. After all, it was a large, well-financed conglomerate, while Turner Broadcasting was still small and highly leveraged. Making matters worse, our SATCOM III agreement guaranteed us a transponder only if the satellite had a successful launch—there were no backup provisions in the case of failure.