2014 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race - The rush for first place is on

by Jim Gale, RSHYR Media on 29 Dec 2014 2014 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race - It is going to be a busy day in Hobart, with more than two thirds of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race fleet expected to arrive into Hobart today.

The vast majority of the boats still at sea in the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia’s race are ranged along the Tasmanian coast, with just 11 yachts left in the southern reaches of Bass Strait at 6:00am this morning.

It is a long time since the fleet was so tightly bunched at this stage in the race, with even the most distant, slowest boats so comparatively close to Hobart.

All are still enjoying the good, at times strong north-easterly wind that has been driving them home hard under spinnaker since yesterday afternoon.

After a comparatively slow first half, the final stages of this 70th chapter of the Rolex Sydney Hobart saga is proving to be as fast as the initial long range weather forecasts predicted when it was delivered to the sailors at the CYCA briefing before Christmas.

The skippers of the smaller boats were smiling then. This morning they are grinning from ear to ear.

For this is proving to be a race for the smallest and oldest – in keeping with the CYCA celebrating its 70th anniversary and the 70th edition of its famous race.

In first place on handicap at 6;30am this morning was After Midnight, Mark and Greg Tobin’s Farr 40, followed by Sean Langman’s 82 year old, 30 foot Maluka of Kermandie, then one of only two three-time overall winners, Love and War, Simon Kurts’ beautiful S&S 47, along with Wild Rose, Roger Hickman’s Farr 43 from 1985 which won the race overall under IOR in 1993, the last time twin overall winners were decided in IOR and IMS.

The first boat bigger than 50 feet in the handicap standings is Merlin, David Forbes Kaiko 52, way down at 22nd, and then you have to go all the way down to 35th, to find Nicholas Bartels Cookson 50 Terra Firma. In other words, it is a small and possibly old boat race.

In recent years the 50 and 60 footers have dominated the Rolex Sydney Hobart, but this year the Bass Strait high pressure ridge that proved so critical in the race for line honours has also defined the handicap race.

While the smaller, older boats were still enjoying a northerly on Saturday morning along the New South Wales coast, sailing to their optimal rated speed, the faster boats entering Bass Strait became trapped on the wrong side of the ridge in next to nothing, losing precious hours. To add to their woes, the northerly that finally arrived yesterday afternoon to liberate them would also push their smaller rivals unimpeded across the Strait.

A downwind spinnaker-fest is exactly what the Melbourne sled Chutzpah was built for. When the wind kicks in and the kite goes up, it is hang-on-tight-time on Bruce Taylor’s beamy Caprice 40 takes off.

'The boat is going well; a few close calls, but the crew put in a great effort last night to overcome any issues after a hard night of running in fresh conditions. We had over 30 knots of wind in bursts. We had a lot of spinnaker changes to cope with the varying wind speeds,' Chutzpah’s navigator Kingsley Piesse reported this morning as they rounded Tasman Island.

Last year, at this stage of the race, Chutzpah took a pounding as a vicious front smashed into the small boats. This year is so much better. 'It’s much nicer. We got 35 knots at Tasman, but we got the kite down in one piece and put a Jib top up.'

Chutzpah was lying in sixth place at the time, the best of the modern planing 40 footers.

By 6:30am 12 yachts had finished with another nine scheduled to arrive within the next hour.

Meanwhile, last night’s two casualties, Queenslander Bill Wild’s Wedgetail and the New Zealand V70 Giacomo owned by Jim Delegat, are limping towards Hobart, having cleared their broken rigging, disappointed but safe.

'We are a little disappointed. Yeah,' says Wedgetail's sailing master, Kevin Costin. 'We’re just trying to sort it out. This is twice in two years, that’s not good. But, you know, Bill’s, well, Bill’s pretty amazing. He put a lot of money into this, a lot of effort; he’s probably the most upbeat,' he said of owner, Bill Wild.

'Basically we were just north of Maria. A little wave caught us, we broached, and the mast failed. We’ve probably done that sort of broach many times before, on many boats. It’s totally broken at the third spreader - in two pieces.

For Jim Delegat, Giacomo’s broken mast must have been doubly disappointing. He narrowly lost an absorbing duel last year to the other V70, Black Jack, but beat it overall. That duel was back on again and this year, before the mast came tumbling down, with Giacomo in command.