Can Rán run away with the Rolex Sydney Hobart race?

by Rob Kothe on 26 Dec 2009
When overseas horses or boats come to Australia shores their previous form needs careful discussion.

One veteran Sydney to Hobart racing skipper when asked about British boat Rán’s prospects responded gruffly, ‘never heard of it ‘.

Since then his crew have gently reminded him that if Niklas Zennström’s 72 footer Rán won the Rolex Sydney to Hobart race that would be the third Rolex watch for the Swedish sailor, though he can afford to buy his own.

The Judel Vroljik 72 Rán (pronounced Rhaan), won the 2009 Rolex Fastnet race and was a convincing winner in the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup 2009 in Costa Smeralda, well ahead of Roger Sturgeon’s STP 65 the winner of the 2007 Sydney Hobart.

Zennström, a 43 year old Swedish Internet specialist along with his business Janus Friis co-founded Kazaa' the peer-to-peer file sharing application. Then in 2002 the pair created Skype, the very successful internet phone (VOIP) system, which they sold just three years later to e-Bay for US$2.6 billion.

While this is his first internationally competitive big boat, Zennström is not new to sailing. ‘I was brought up in Sweden around Stockholm which is one of the most beautiful sailing venues in the world. The problem is that the season is very short. That’s what I was doing when I was younger; I started at age 7 then went on to race dinghies, Optis and Lasers – we never raced big boats when I was growing up. We were also cruising with my family every summer.

'I have lived in London since 2002. I was educated in Sweden, the UK and US and then I’ve been living in several places in Europe and Amsterdam, Luxembourg and Copenhagen.

'I started to pick it (sailing) up again a few years back in the UK, sailing out of Hamble and it’s a fantastic place to sail. We have GBR on our sails and we have a British flag on the back of the boat. Our home base is Hamble.

'Most of the team are British; we have a few Kiwis and a few Australians and an Italian onboard as well.
Sweden is on my passport. I moved away from Sweden in ’96; but where we really started to pick it up again was in Hamble so that’s where we’ve been building our boat and the crew is coming from.

‘I think that all the maxis are focussed on the line honours; they’ve been developing those boats for speed rather than from optimising IRC handicap. We have built our boat based on trying to optimise from a handicap viewpoint.

'When we conceived Ran, the challenge was to build a boat that would win a Maxi Worlds in the 72 foot class in the light Mediterranean racing conditions and also being able to do well in the Sydney to Hobart.

'What we’ve seen in the last 48 hours is that the weather forecast is changing quite a lot. So far it doesn’t look like a big storm will be hitting us, so I think everyone is relieved about that.

'I asure we’re going to get wet and I’m sure also there’s going to be a few squalls with more wind as well. It’s too early to say whether the forecasters are favouring us or not. For Ran the more upwind we can get the better for us and the more breeze we get the better for us.

‘Potentially we have 'a good seat at the table'. If it’s a big boat race we have potential – it can also be a situation where it’s a big, big boat race because the maxis are going to be quite ahead of us and there could be situations where we have a 'shut down', so you never know.

'What’s always fascinating about this race is that it’s wide open and you don’t really know who can do best in the very varied conditions’.