22nd Annual Hydro Tasmania Three Peaks Race - Final Wrap-Up

by Holly Ranson on 9 Apr 2010 The Hydro Tasmania Three Peaks Race’s smallest-ever fleet provided some of the best quality racing seen in its 22-year history this Easter, with close competition from the front of the fleet to the back.

Ten teams took on the challenging sailing-running endurance race, which starts at Beauty Point in Northern Tasmania on Good Friday and stops at Flinders Island in Bass Strait and Coles Bay on Tasmania’s east coast before finishing in the State’s capital, Hobart.

The absence of the catamaran Slingshot, which had won every race since 2005, left the race for line honors wide open. Slingshot skipper, Phil Marshall still started as race favorite as crew on board four-time previous winner Westbury-Mersey Pharmacy, the 11m Chamberlin catamaran of Devonport pharmacist Terry Travers, but the boat became the race’s only retirement, ensuring the race would have a new winner in 2010.

Adding another new element to the race was a rule-change that saw every team entered in the Tilman Trophy. Named in honor of the race’s founder, British mountaineer Bill Tilman, the trophy is awarded on a points system based on the number of team-members who complete running legs, the crew’s average age, and for cruising division entrants, the amount of motoring allowance used.

Following the race was easier than ever before with satellite trackers fixed to each yacht regularly plotting their position online.

The Dovell 36 Team Whistler, skippered by Hobart barrister David Rees, wrote itself into the record books as the first overall winner to have had all crew-members complete a running leg. The boat came from behind to record an emphatic win, beating home multihull division winner Deguello by almost six hours to complete the 335-mile, 136-km course in three days, eight hours and 41 minutes.

The team’s third Three Peaks Race together started on Good Friday, April 2, in an unusual southerly that made for a spectacular spinnaker start. It was one of three boats to anticipate the start gun and have to turn around and re-start but it wasn’t long before it was again battling it out at the front of the fleet with Haphazard, the Radford 46 of race veteran Nick Edmunds. Charles Meredith’s catamaran Peccadillo joined the fray and the three boats put on an exciting tactical display in one of the closest races out of the Tamar River in years.

Haphazard made a break just before reaching the farewell beacons at the river mouth, but it was Travers’ catamaran Westbury-Mersey Pharmacy that snuck around the fleet to snatch the First Out of the Heads trophy.

Once in Bass Strait the fleet was becalmed for several hours until the forecast south-easterly hit, providing a one-tack upwind sail to Flinders Island. Wind and tide clashed creating a short, steep chop that made for an uncomfortable sail and struck down members of each team with sea-sickness.
Fifteen hours later, John Brierley’s Deguello was the surprise first arrival at Lady Barron. It completed the 98 nautical mile leg just before 5am on Saturday. Runners Allan Hood, of Hobart, and Victorian Mal Grimmett, chose to run anti-clockwise around the 65km circuit, which takes in the 742m-high peak of Mt Strzelecki, making the most of the southerly breeze on the open road early before returning through the coastal bush track.

Westbury-Mersey Pharmacy overtook Haphazard in Flinders Island’s harbor, Franklin Sound, to arrive just half an hour after Deguello and offload its runners, Launceston triathletes Tim Piper and Jim Finlay. Haphazard was the first monohull to arrive at 6am, team-members John Claridge and Charles Gunn following Hood and Grimmett clockwise around the island.

Piper and Finlay ran the opposite way and were the first to appear back at Lady Barron race control six hours and 42 minutes later. Hood and Grimmett were just 11 minutes behind but had lost ground on the grueling run, which took them seven hours and 24 minutes to complete. Both boats took off into a 15-knot southerly and short, steep swell, followed 18 minutes later by Haphazard, a fast run of six hours 48 minutes pulling some distance back for the fully-crewed division leader.

The next three running teams were all on the course before 7am but things then reached a standstill with two boats aground within sight of Lady Barron and two more becalmed further out in the channel.

For Northern Tasmanians Jamie Cooper and Rob McLelland it was a frustrating repeat of last year when their Beneteau First 12 Don’t Panic, was left grounded on a sandbar. However, runners Aubrey Henricks and Doug Grubert lifted the team’s morale by posting the fastest time on the Mt Strzelecki course; six hours and 29 minutes.

By 8.30pm on Saturday, the entire fleet was bashing down the east coast on its way to Coles Bay, the unpleasant chop causing more sickness and eventually forcing the retirement of race leader Westbury-Mersey Pharmacy.

A tack-for-tack battle for the lead then ensued between Haphazard and Deguello, but as the wind began to fade in the early hours of Sunday morning, the catamaran pulled ahead by several nautical miles. With about thirty miles to their destination, the fleet was becalmed again off Cape Tourville and spent several frustrating hours wallowing about. In the late afternoon a north-east sea-breeze arrived, giving the boats a good spinnaker run down to the Schouten Passage, through which they pass between Freycinet National Park and Schouten Island to enter Great Oyster Bay. It was then another beat to windward to Coles Bay in a dying breeze. Shifty conditions allowed Haphazard to make up ground on Deguello and the pair docked at the jetty at 6.31pm and 6.53pm respectively. Haphazard’s Gunn and Claridge, who had taken forty minutes from Deguello’s Hood and Grimmett on Saturday’s 65km run, were expected to launch the monohull into first place by the end of the 38km run, but a knee injury less than 5km into the run put paid to that goal and left Hood and Grimmett free to get Deguello away in first place.

In windless conditions it was more than an hour later that Team Whistler rowed its way into Coles Bay, making good use of the human-powered propulsion allowed for racing yachts. Veteran of twelve races, Jacqui Guy and her partner Michael McIntyre looked keen for the run as they headed off on the race’s second course, which takes in three beaches, including the famous Wineglass, bush track and a scramble up the rocky peaks of Mt Graham and Mt Freycinet.

Team Whistler had a break of almost two hours on the 14m Chamberlin-designed cruising catamaran VisitFlindersIsland.com.au, skippered by Hobart’s Steve Laird, which made a dramatic arrival in Coles Bay at 10pm. After rowing nearly two nautical miles, exhausted crew-member, Flinders Island deputy mayor Michael Grimshaw jumped fully-clothed off the jetty.

Soon after the arrival of two more yachts at 12.30am, the first runners returned to kick off the race’s third and final sailing leg. Deguello’s Hood and Grimmett took six hours and 16 minutes to conquer the peaks in the pitch dark, giving them a lead of more than an hour. But with drifting conditions prevailing, Deguello’s lights were still visible when Haphazard departed at 2am and Team Whistler at 3am.

New South Welshmen Gareth Parker and Karl Miller finished the Freycinet run at 5.46am to find their boat Peccadillo, a 46’ catamaran, still moored out in Coles Bay. After yelling and flashing their head-torches to attract the crew’s attention, the boat made its way over to the jetty to collect its runners. Parker said, 'We’re going to have something to eat and a sleep, but first we’re going to shout at our sailors'.

Don’t Panic’s Henricks and Grubert overtook Parker and Miller on the course on their way to setting the fastest time of four hours 46 minutes – just 36 minutes outside the record – in the pitch black dark.

The fleet’s tail-enders were finally docked at Coles Bay by 6.45am and with the help of daylight, posted the second and third-fastest run-times to get Team Wildfire and Carey Hire away by midday.

Tactical racing was the feature of the one hundred nautical-mile journey to Hobart, with several major decisions to make and opportunities for big gains or losses.

Hoping for a forecast south-westerly to eventuate, Deguello chose a course around the outside of Maria Island and then Tasman Island, instead of opting for the racing division short-cut through Dunalley Canal. The race has not been won by rounding Tasman Island since 2003.

Team Whistler chose the Dunalley Canal, prepared to kayak or row the boat through, should they be faced with a headwind or becalmed. The move paid off as the breeze held in from the south-east, giving Team Whistler a perfect reach across Frederick Henry Bay and into the Derwent, sailing the leg in just seventeen hours, more than five hours faster than any other racing crew.

Skipper Rees then had another major decision to make; send his whole crew running up the mountain in their quest to win the Tilman Trophy, risking the overall win if another team’s runners overtook them, or just send runners McIntyre and Guy to secure the win but sacrifice the sailors’ fitness training.
But a twenty nautical-mile lead on Deguello gave the team the confidence to tackle the 33km run together. At 1270m, Mt Wellington is the highest of the three peaks competitors scale during the four-day race and covers terrain varying from central city streets to steep, rocky bush tracks.

Visibility was down to nil when Team Whistler arrived at the summit just after 10pm due to a thick, cold fog. But the five pushed on to break the four-hour barrier by two minutes, finishing just before midnight on Monday and claiming first place before the second boat had even arrived at Constitution Dock.

Team Whistler was the first monohull since 2000 to win the event outright. Crew-member Jory Linscott put the win down to teamwork, training and thorough preparation, 'We’ve finally proved that teams can win it; it took a lot of effort, a lot of training. It means a fair bit and now we’ll go and do it in England.'

Team Whistler will continue its 2010 campaign; Two Countries Six Peaks, by competing in the British Three Peaks Race in June.

It was not until 1.40am on Tuesday that multihull winner Deguello reached Hobart, slightly ahead of cruising division entrant Community Carbon. The Beneteau 50 skippered by Victorian Jeff Dusting, had used its motoring allowance to combat the windless conditions. It too decided to go for Tilman Trophy points by sending all five team-members up the mountain, a decision which dropped it to fourth overall.

Haphazard’s Gunn and Claridge battled through injury to defeat the Victorians and claim third finisher.

Brierley’s Deguello won the racing multihull division comfortably, finishing the run at 5.40am, just before its main competitor, VisitFlindersIsland.com.au, sailed into the dock.

Despite being beaten over the final run by 44 seconds, Don’t Panic runners Henricks and Grubert won themselves the King of the Mountains title for the fastest combined running time.

Second-placed racing monohull Carey Hire’s runners Adrian Young and Ian Franzke wrapped up the 22nd Hydro Tasmania Three Peaks Race with their return to the Hobart docks at 1.30pm on Tuesday.

The winner of the Tilman Trophy, handicap awards and other special awards will be announced at tomorrow’s official presentation dinner in Hobart.