The Race .... ups and downs of the Sydney Hobart

by Emma Watt on 20 Jan 2006 The author Emma Watt is in her mid-30s, an industrial relations lawyer, who came to sailing quite late in life - after deciding that three years of skydiving was enough. .

She has never sailed anything smaller than 28 foot, missing out she says ‘on all that developmental stuff that comes with mucking about in smaller boats. To this day, if someone asks me how a sail looks I'm more likely to say 'big and beige' rather than commenting on the position off the draft, the twist, or the behaviour of the telltales.’ ‘

‘Navigation is really my forte, although some days I wish I had chosen to become a meteorologist.’

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Addiction is an Inglis 37 from Royal Melbourne Yacht Squadron, co-owned by Peter Davison and Richard McGarvie. We completed the 2004 Sydney to Hobart, but sadly spent New Year’s Eve in Storm Bay, and we were back in 2005 to see if we could make it to Hobart in time for the festivities. Our crew for the race was Peter Davison (PJ), Richard McGarvie, Jeff Whiteside, Rob Buchanan, Pauline Lister, Matt Setton, Simon Shaddick, Warwick Baggs, Peter MacGiollafhearga and me, Emma Watt.

On Boxing Day, the atmosphere at the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia was sizzling as everyone put in last minute preparations. Also sizzling was the weather – I don’t know how those boys off Hugo Boss managed to keep their designer suits on in that heat. Our final safety audit, on Boxing Day morning, gave us the all-clear - the original safety audit had identified some issues, including a deficient first aid kit. As stocking the kit had been almost my sole responsibility apart from some food preparation I felt a little sheepish … I solemnly vow to be more thorough next time.

The wind at the start was a light northerly, and there was a bit of chop on Sydney Harbour. We had a pretty poor start and ended up a long way towards the back of the fleet. It seemed as if the backmarkers weren’t worth protecting from marauding spectator boats. We nearly got wiped out by at least one motor launch laden with champagne-swilling spectators unable to comprehend that the exclusion zone was reserved for racing yachts.

Once finally clear of the Heads, we headed out to sea, a tactical decision that did not pay off in the slightest. The boats that stayed inshore made much better time down the New South Wales coast than we did.

Later in the race, while we were shooting past boats at speed, we shouldn’t have been behind them in the first place.

At some point in the race – the days meld into on-watch/off-watch – we had run out of southerly puff, and were waiting for the northerly to come through. We were bobbing about with the sails flogging, but due to a helpful current, we were still making three knots over the ground in the right direction.

Addiction is a very hot boat below when there’s no wind, and sleeping in the quarter berths is like trying to sleep in a sauna, while sleeping in the primary berths in the cabin is too distracting. Pauline and I took turns sleeping in the forepeak, nesting on a couple of sails. It is a reasonably cool place to sleep, and it’s clear of the on-watch crew unless there’s a sail change. The only problem with sleeping in the forepeak is that it has a front row view of the head, so there were a couple of times when I was desperately keeping my eyes shut so as not to burn into my retinas the image of someone using the head.

Mind you, there’s really no such thing as privacy on board anyway – the guys often peed off the back of the boat, and Peter and I started scoring their efforts on criteria such as safety consciousness (kneeling in heavy weather to bring the centre of gravity lower scored extra points, PJ), direction and how many shakes … sorry guys, hope we didn’t cause performance anxiety.

As we were approaching Gabo Island, I was below decks at the nav station, and PJ was on the helm. It was the middle of the night and visibility was poor as there was no moon. PJ asked me to contact the approaching vessel and ask them what their intentions were, as he couldn’t identify their lights. I dialled them up on VHF, verified that they had seen us, and then stuck my head up on deck to see what all the fuss was about. Less than a few boat lengths away was a very large Bravo Yankee Foxtrot (Big Yacht Flattener), the weirdest looking ship I’ve ever seen, with no discernible middle, and a host of lights that I’ve certainly never seen on my Collision Regulations flash cards.

Later that watch, we had a fabulous wind from the north-west, around 30-35 knots, and we were running with a full main and the masthead spinnaker, getting spectacular boat speed (over 20 knots at times) and a steady 13.5 knots speed over ground, which is phenomenal for us. This was truly racing on the edge, we had the bit between the teeth and we were thundering south.

Finally we stepped over the edge and broached. Those of us on deck were hanging on to anything to hand, then someone blew the halyard, we rounded up, and discovered that we had giftwrapped the keel with our pride and joy, the beautiful masthead kite.

At that point in time we really needed about twenty people on board to help set the boat to rights again, but no such luck. Four of us ended up sitting on the foredeck trying to keep hold of what was left of the kite, and pull it out from underneath the boat. After several minutes of trying to get it untangled we had to cut the tapes along the edges of the sail and haul the rest of the kite on board, along with, it seemed from the weight of it, half of Bass Strait.

With no sail up at the front of the boat, we were a bit unstable in the heavy seas, and while we were getting the main sorted out, someone fell on my head, and I heard that horrible crunching noise when neck vertebrae crackle. I remember thinking, ‘oh no, that’s going to hurt later’, but actually, despite being a bit stiff, it was as if I’d had a rather primitive chiropractic adjustment, with no ill effect.

Once the northerly gave way to the forecast southerly gale, we spent quite some time beating across Bass Strait, beating ourselves against the bulkheads and making generally slow progress compared to the eye-popping speeds of the second night out. Then the wind turned northwest again, and we were back to running/ reaching conditions – Addiction’s favoured points of sail.

The seas and direction of the wind started making the helm headstrong, and it got to the point that the helmsman needed a helm-catcher on the other side of the cockpit, for those times when a bit of extra help was needed to keep the boat on course. It was my turn to sit on the low side of the boat opposite the tiller, with PJ on the helm, Jeff on the main and Simon all sitting on the high side. We were swamped by a massive wave coming over the deck, the boat gybed, I fell across the cockpit (once again, thanks to the tether, stayed on the boat), and Simon, Jeff and PJ were all swept to the back of the boat. PJ was squeezed into a corner no grown man should have to fit into, Jeff lost his glasses and beanie overboard, and Simon used his spine to bend a stainless steel staunchion. I don’t think he recommends it. We were all underwater, and the only way we were going to right ourselves was to get my head out from underneath the tiller, where it had jammed. Somehow we managed to get settled again, but the seas were quite wild.

When we reached the south east coast of Tasmania, we were surfing down waves for such a long time that it felt like we just wouldn’t stop – each surf continued longer and faster than normal – ride ‘em, cowboys!

Richard Bennett, sailing photographer, chose that time to fly over us and take some photos – and those pictures do tell a great story.

Of course, we couldn’t finish the race without drama – the gennaker had to come down in a hurry, and one of the spinnaker sheets ended up underneath the boat, and tangled in the propeller. We did