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Sydney To Hobart

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And there off again for another sprint down to Hobart. Wild Oats 11 yet again gets another fantastic start to windward of the fleet and is rolling the whole fleet and getting ready to hoist the big gear. But wait what this? Wild Thing has entered the race course and looks to be putting themselves on a collision course with Wild Oats. Team New Zeland in their beast of a AC 72 have let the fleet sort themselves out and are now zigging past them and have already left the bay quickly followed by akatea and rikki.

 

Well you never know if that was the start or knot as we cant see it. grumble, looks like ill just have to enter it next year to see it.

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This coverage is a f**king joke. No video, radio, tracker is a joke! One of the big boats has been refused entry 3 hours prior to start and one other is in a OCS dispute.

What a shambles and is there any wonder this race is shrinking so rapidly!

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piebuss

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Race report from Abracadabra 5612.

 

Although by no means considered a fast boat, the crew was certainly at the cutting edge of VB consumption and Bundaberg (shudder) mixing ratios.

 

Our start was nothing short of glamorous, finding the only patch of clear air available on the start line, and making the most of it, edging ahead of the "buffer" boats we had placed ourselves next to. Within minutes we were able to hoist the masthead genny and were making legs on our competition.

 

A flawless drop at the first mark put us on the wind and clear ahead of the riff-raff as we passed the heads.

 

sydhob2012start.jpg

 

Helicopters buzzed overhead like annoying mosquitos. They did take some pretty amazing pics which we picked up in Hobart...

 

553112_10151353444932025_382464728_n.jpg

 

We rounded the upwind mark and tacked onto port, heading south in fairly steady upwind conditions of 15-20kts. Within a couple of hours some of the larger boats began to pass us, which was a little upsetting, but made us feel pretty happy about our start.

The crew settled down into a routine fairly quickly, and by 6pm the off watch went below for a rest.

 

The first night was uneventful. Around 4am the wind began to die off, and by mid-morning it had swung around to the North East.

We had to work hard to keep the boat moving, and were able to find breeze where others around us could not. Changing between masthead kite and code zero, we were able to scoot along nicely and by midday we had covered a lot of ground with a building breeze.

By late afternoon on the second night we were approaching Eden and the start of Bass Strait. We dropped to the fractional when the wind was holding above 20kts North East. It was a surreal feeling speeding towards one of the most infamous straits in the world, with stars above and storm clouds and lightening flashing ahead.

Around 4am we made the call to drop the kite as a looming front about 2 miles away approached, with lightning and thunder sending shivers down every spine on board. The drop couldn’t have come a minute too late, as within seconds of dropping we were hit with 30+kts from the South West.

This was the change we had been positioning ourselves for, and we made the most of it, bearing off a few degrees and headed 180 degrees into short, steep waves, confused by a North East ground swell.

The confused sea made for some uncomfortable sailing, but the boat didn’t seem to complain. We were hit by several squalls during the early morning, pushing the wind indicator a little over 40kts true for short periods, but the crew and boat responded well, with minimal damage, and good boat speed.

The skipper had spent a lot of the race navigating, and occasionally popped his head up to give good news about progress, weather updates etc… Being roughly 120 miles across, Bass Strait is a place you want to hear good news. Perhaps the most welcoming news he gave was around 6am when he announced that we were in the lee of Flinders Island, and had clocked just over 120 miles in the last 12 hours. Not altogether a bad average for an old IMS boat, and it meant we were out of the strait and heading for Hobart.

Something about announcing good news early always attracts disaster. By late morning on day 3 the wind had died to almost nothing. We were watching the forecasts intently, and the general feeling was for the breeze to fill from the South East and swing quickly back to the South West.

We didn’t want to be caught offshore when the breeze swung South West we decided to stick to the rum line, which tracked fairly close to shore, and get South quickly. Most of our competition was well to leeward of us, around 20 miles offshore, so we considered ourselves in a good position for when the South Westerly filled. What followed was nearly 12 hours of SSE breeze of around 5kts. Bugger!!!

It was about this stage that days and nights began to blend into each other for me. We had some issues with the main traveller blowing up, which we managed to fix without losing too much. By midmorning of day 4 we were rounding Tasman Point, with the spectacular organ pipes looming above.

The wind had finally turned South West, just when we could have done with a Southeaster. The 40 miles from Tasman point were on the nose around 25kts until we finally entered the Derwent river, and could crack sheets a little. We were amazed to find another 4 boats making their way up the river to the finish line. We managed to find some energy to hike franticly and get the boat moving. It could have been the dirty rustard (rum and custard) poured at the entrance to the Derwent that got us excited, but we managed to claw back two positions to finish just within our target of the top 50 boats.

The finish was by far the best part of the whole race. The docks were lined with thousands of people cheering us in as we did a lap past the “Taste of Tasmania” food and wine festival. Beer was delivered to us on the dock and a couple of Mt Gay bottles were brought up from their hiding places in the bilge.

Once the boat was dry we headed to the Custom House to carry on, and the rest is a blur.

 

It was a bloody hard race, and I’ll need some time before doing it again, but I have no doubt that I will. The atmosphere in Hobart alone is worth the difficulty of getting there, but next time I’d like to go on a faster boat.

A big thank you to the guys on Akatea for NYE rum and banter. It was great to hear a Kiwi accent after being in Sydney for 6 months.

A huge thank you to the Skipper Jim Murchison (although I don’t think he reads this forum). It was a huge undertaking for him to get the boat and crew ready and he did a good job of it.

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