Rolex Sydney Hobart – Thank your mother for the fish!!!

by Rob Kothe on 30 Dec 2015 A tragic tale unfolded in the Derwent River this morning for the boat that has lead the IRC handicap battle for the last two days.

Bear with us while we give you some background.

In order to win this iconic ocean race, under IRC handicap, there are three things you absolutely need to have accomplished. Two you can do something about, whereas the third is entirely out of your control.

Firstly, you have to get there. Sounds simple, but it means a well-prepared boat and hardened crew that extract what they can from the vessel and themselves, all the while ensuring that they and the gear survive whatever may be thrown at them during the journey South.

Secondly, you have to win your division. The big end of town will be long gone after the gun and in reality, the boats may be headed for the same port, but rarely in exactly the same seas and almost always in different conditions due to the elapsed time difference between them. Your division has boats of similar speeds near you and many a race has seen combatants almost able to read the dials on the boat next door.

Finally, you have to hope that Huey, the God of Wind, allows your division to get the correct weather window that will allow you to proceed at best possible speed down the New South Wales coast before leaping across to Tasmania and on to the corner at Tasman Island.

At the same time, it is hoped that those ahead of you do not receive favourable conditions and then also that the weather pattern closes down behind to hamper the progress of the vessels to your stern.

So then, what you have when looking at trackers, out will come computer driven handicap predictions for the 628 mile Rolex Sydney to Hobart race, which ignore the fact that most races are won and lost in the last 40 miles from Tasman Light, then across Storm Bay and up past the Iron Pot and into the River Derwent proper.

As we have explained over the years, every ten minutes or so during the race, the computers spit out a new number set, with ranking. At best, these need to be taken with a tablespoon of sea salt.

In lightish weather this number is the ETA. Turn Tasman Light at 20:00’ or words to that effect…. And the reason is the factor that has caused possibly more heartache and grief in the last 70 Hobart races than anything else. Namely, the Derwent goes to sleep at night, just like most humans.

11 nautical miles from the finish is a marker called the Iron Pot. A boat arriving there may have averaged ten knots from Eddystone Light and across Storm Bay. However, it may take two or three, even four hours to go that last 11 miles, depending just how tired the Derwent is. It seems most Hobart sailors have a story to tell and year after year, they look for sympathy from other sailors, but they don’t get it.

Many a boat has been absolutely famous at 2000hrs, but at 0300 is still drifting up the Derwent. Indeed, just a couple of years ago, one particular vessel reported in at around 2100hrs that they were ‘just passing the Iron Pot with an ETA of 2300hrs.’ Only about five minutes later the same crew radioed in to say that they were 'once more passing the Iron Pot', only, this time it was backwards!

You see Huey uses the Sydney Hobart race to remind us mere mortals that most things in life are about timing. So it's way too early to decide a handicap chance, which is most easily done when the boats are tied up in Constitution Dock.

Early afternoon is an excellent time to finish, the 2008 Tattersall’s Cup (IRC handicap) winner, Bob Steel's TP52 Quest finished at 2 pm plus 37 seconds, the 2010 winner Geoff Boettcher's Reichel-Pugh 51, Secret Men’s Business 3.5, finished at an almost perfect time 1342hrs.

Yesterday Paul Clitheroe’s TP52 Balance had a dream run from Tasman Light in the heaviest of the afternoon sea breeze, she was so fast she had to revise her ETA as she sped past the Iron Pot, the entrance to the Derwent doing 10 knots. She became the Club house leader but there are lots of boats on the water who could manage a better corrected time.

The first of those was Swiss Skipper Eric de Turckheim and his Archambault 13 crew aboard the beautifully campaigned Teasing Machine. Stacked with talent, well sailed, she won Div. 1 at Cowes 2015, she’s won the Channel Race, definitely a class act.

They had sailed a great race, going well offshore for good breeze and excellent current they were last night the clear leaders based on their overall race speed.

Today they sped across Storm Bay doing 7’s, well on track to become the new clubhouse leader in the battle to win the Tattersalls Cup, taking that mantle from Balance, who was formerly Bob Steel’s Quest, the winner of that 2008 race.

But then disaster struck, the wind was dropping fast as they sailed past Iron Port.

in front of Swiss Boat in the light of the ebbing moon, Turckheim saw the ghostly figure of the Weather God Huey high in the sky, or maybe it was a trick of the light.

Anyway the wind died to nothing and the boat came to a glassy stand still and there was deadly silence.
Then came the booming words from the heavens, spoken with an Aussie drawl, ‘Bloody good race mate, thanks for coming and thank your mother for the fish.’

Translating for the wider non Australian audience that means ‘Don’t waste your time here mate, piss off now’
Huey had shut the gate.

So as we close 0.3. 0.2. 0.00 are numbers appearing on the mast instrument panel of the Swiss boat and they will join the thousands of us, who have been similarly punished in the last 71 years.