Getting Mushka to the Golden Globe Race 2018

by Ian MacWilliams on 2 Dec 2016 The Golden Globe Race which starts in June 2018 is a retro re-run of the calamitous 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. In that race there were nine starters. Only one, Robin Knox-Johnston, finished.

When Shane Freeman read about the event in the middle of 2015, he was immediately attracted to the idea. Within a month he’d looked at a number qualifying boats and within two months he’d purchased Mushka, a Tradewinds 35. There are 22 makes of yacht that qualify for entry to the GGR2018. What they all have in common is they are between 32-36 feet long and have a full length keel with a rudder attached to the trailing edge of the keel.

The re-run of the 1968 event is the creation of Australian adventurer Don McIntyre. With 30 by-invitation provisional entrants confirmed and a waiting list of another six hopefuls, the return of the race has created significant interest several years before the start date. Like the original race it is a solo, non-stop, circumnavigation of the planet requiring contestants to sail east under the “5 Capes”.

The general principle is that if it wasn’t on Knox-Johnson’s boat in 1968, it can’t be on your boat in 2018. So competitors in this event will circumnavigate the earth using no digital equipment whatsoever. No GPS, chart plotter or any number of other modern aids these days used aboard yachts the world over.

Shane purchased Mushka in Queensland and so the first task was to get the boat to Melbourne where it would undergo a major refit for the race. Sailing single handed, he arrived in Melbourne earlier this year and has worked virtually full time on the boat ever since.

Having completed a successful career in the banking world, Shane retired in 2013 at the age of 58. Sailing had been one of Shane’s passions during his working life and he’d sailed in Europe and the Pacific but only ever in a cruising capacity. When asked why he suddenly decided to do the race Shane said that “Often in life, our biggest and better decisions, are those that we feel instinctively drawn towards. These decisions generally don’t stand up to the discipline of cognitive logic decision-trees, or risk-reward analyses, or probability theorem, they just feel right for us.”

However previously, Shane has undertaken activities that have elements common to GGR2018. They’ve included white water rafting the Franklin River, horse riding the Victorian high plains, participating in a week long cycle race across Australia’s Simpson desert, mountain biking the Himalayan foot hills, sailing the Pacific, walking a 1000 km trail though Spain and taking a 14 day hike through central Australia. What’s common about these other activities and GGR2018 for Shane is that they all occur in the outdoors, they’re generally endurance activities with a personal challenge, they are generally activities to learn new skills andthey are in essence an individual (non-team) activity. For Shane the GGR2018 ticks all these boxes for him.

Since landing Muska in Melbourne in February the list of activities that have been undertaken as part of the boats refit for this journey is huge.
New rigging, new sails, LED lighting all around, new anchoring systems,
converting the forestay and the inner stay from to hanked sails, plus a new track and car system for raising and lowering the main sail. There’s been the replacement of the front deck hatch, the replacement of starboard fuel tank and the exchange of the gas stove top, with a methylated spirits unit. The three blade fixed propeller was replaced with a two blade prop, the removal and inspection of the rudder, an inspection of the steering pedestal and linkages, the addition of new blocks and winches and the removal and replacement of the boats waste system. New HF and VHF radios were installed, all engine hoses were replaced, the deck covered with non-slip paint a new life raft
and more.

However all of this preparation has not only been for the 2018 event. Unlike many of the competitors from Europe, Shane has to get his boat to the start line from half way around the world.

Of the 30 competitors lined up for the GGR2018, many have had years of competitive sailing experience in world-class yachting races. On the other hand some who’ll line up, could be classed as weekend sailors who’ve never really sailed in open seas. Shane’s places himself in the middle of the field when it comes to experience and gaining more expertise for the actual race is one of the reasons that he’s decided to sail the boat single handed to the start line and not send it by ship as the two other Australian entries will do. With the refit of the boat now complete, Shane plans to set sail on December 11

The trip will take him below New Zealand, under Cape Horn and up the east side of the Americas, part of the same route that he’ll need to follow in 2018. His first scheduled land fall is the Faukland Islands, around 8 weeks of non stop sailing. For this journey, Shane will have all the digital aids that he’ll need but he’ll be honing his celestial navigational skills in preparation for the real event in 2018.

When he signed up for the GGR2018, Shane knew he had a long list of items to work through in order to get both the boat and himself to the starting line. The past 12 months has been full of the technical side of the journey, the preparation of the boat for the tough conditions it’ll face in the Southern Ocean. In a few weeks time, Shane will face the next stage of his preparation for the 300 day GGR2018 event, when he sails alone for extended legs of his trip to the UK.