Chieftain leads grand prix boats across the line

by Rolex Media Centre on 29 Dec 2005 Gerry O’Rourke reckoned there should be a special line honours division for 50-footers after his Cookson 50 Chieftain crossed the line at 4:38am today.

To say he was in a buoyant mood is an understatement. The year he chose for his first Rolex Sydney Hobart had turned out to be ideal for the boat he had built in Auckland earlier this year.

'Fluky conditions at the start in Sydney, fluky coming into Hobart, but we were very lucky to get a running Hobart and I believe only one in every ten could be a running Hobart,' said O’Rourke.

'The boat suited it so we did well - had a good race, enjoyed it, fantastic competition and great to see Australia and Tasmania.

'Mind you I’d have liked to see a little more of Tasmania when I came in.'

Chieftain passed the great Tasmanian landmarks in the dead of night.

The conditions didn’t quite pan out as O’Rourke had expected. He tacked out about 150 miles off the coast so that he could come into Hobart on a gybe only to find the wind coming from a different direction than anticipated.

'We ended up tight reaching in as opposed to running,' he said.

'I thought I’d get her planing earlier but it’s good, it’s still all good. Any day you get a running Hobart it’s good, you know.

'We touched 24 knots at steady periods of time day and night, so that was good going. If we had kept up those kind of averages we’d have done better.

'We had a few broaches in the Tasmanian Sea. We had gusts of 40 knots, big lumpy seas, very hard to control the boat.'

One of the broaches tore the clew out of a spinnaker and damaged the pod that they set the spinnaker from at the bow of the boat.

So the Irishman can tick off the Rolex Sydney Hobart on his to-do list, though he says he’d love to come back.

'I’d have loved to see the coastline but it was dark so maybe some other time, eh? Maybe I’ll have to buy a new boat in Auckland again,' he smiles.