Sydney Hobart Race 2012 – Bruce Taylor still not meant to be

by Bruce Montgomery on 30 Dec 2012 The Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2012 has seen another familiar picture with Chutzpah’s Bruce Taylor missing again the opportunity of finally winning line honours and Tattersall’s Cup hardware for the 32nd time.

It was not to be - perhaps it is never meant to be - Victorian yachtsman Bruce Taylor has won everything in the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, except line honours and the Tattersall’s Cup for the overall winner on corrected time.

Taylor has now sailed the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia’s 628 nautical mile course 32 times and the big ones have eluded him again. His son Drew has sailed 21, all with his father. They have 10 divisional wins across their six Chutzpahs.

This morning, after pulling into Hobart’s Kings Pier, Bruce, a dentist from Victoria, leapt ashore to bemoan his lot, cheerfully, with the press.

'There you go; there’s another one. This was one with the lot,' he said. 'If there were holes out there we found them.

'Our biggest blue was to go into the Tasmanian coast so close that we sailed inside Maria Island. We’d been expecting a south-westerly to get out; we got a south-easterly.'

Taylor Snr. said their advance weather routing led them to expect 70 per cent downhill sailing, but they only got about 20 per cent.

Then, of course, there were the eyes of the crew the day before, when, one-third of the way across Bass Strait, they had the spinnaker up and wind gusted to 42 knots.

'I’ll never forget the look on their faces,' Taylor said.

Will there be a 33rd Hobart race?

'If they (the crew) want to do it again, I’ll do it again. You don’t want to be out there going round Tasman in a howling gale without a crew like this,' he Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2012