During the second leg — from Cape Town, through raucous seas whipped up by rocketing winds known as the Roaring Forties, to Sydney, Australia — all the boats were savagely battered. Sayula, hit with a mammoth wave, capsized and nearly sank; its crew members were pitched into the sea, but fortunately they were all attached to the boat by safety harnesses, managed to clamber back aboard and survived. In spite of the near tragedy — two sailors on other boats were not as lucky — Sayula won the second leg on corrected time, the only leg in which it finished first.

A third sailor — Bernie Hosking, the same man who had earlier been swept overboard and rescued — was lost from Captain Blyth’s boat, Great Britain II, on the third leg, which took the racers from Sydney across the frigid Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica, around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America and up the coast to Rio de Janeiro. Rounding the fierce promontory of the Cape, where the hazards include gale-force winds, sleetlike rain and a minefield of icebergs, sailors face some of the most treacherous waters in the world. According to a history of the race on the race’s website, up to that time fewer than 10 sporting yachts had endured the journey.

On the fourth leg, from Rio across the Atlantic back to Portsmouth, several boats, including Sayula, were hampered by becalmed winds. The start of the final leg had a staggered start — the larger, more powerful boats started later — so they would arrive at the finish more or less together. Fourteen boats completed the race. Sayula’s time, 155 days 9 hours, became a corrected time of 133 days 13 hours, nearly two days faster than the runner-up.

“The winning difference was my boat and that crew,” Mr. Carlín said afterward. “We had no time to train. My plan was to get to know the crew and teach them how to manage the boat during the first leg, but all of them turned out to be very good.”

Ramón Carlín Lima was born on Aug. 31, 1923, in Puebla, east of Mexico City, where he spent most of his life. Though his mother, Magdalena Lima, was a teacher, he never finished high school; he moved to Mexico City in his midteens and worked in a soap factory after the death of his father, Moises Carlín, who had run a grocery in Puebla.

In the late 1940s, he was selling household goods — cookware, glasses, small appliances — door to door, and in 1960 he founded a highly profitable company, Comercial Doméstica, that sold washing machines and other home appliances.

Mr. Carlín’s first marriage ended in divorce. In addition to his son Enrique, his survivors include his wife, Francisca Larios; another son, Octavio; six daughters, María Teresa, Gloria, Alicia, Emma, Marta and Lourdes; 19 grandchildren; and 22 great-grandchildren.