Mewstone Rock Race revival – down to the ‘Roaring Forties’

by Peter Campbell on 30 May 2010 Mewstone Rock Race is set to return next summer in a move proposed by The Royal Yacht club of Tasmania. The Mewstone Rock Race is a challenging 170 nautical mile south from Hobart and back, rounding this rugged outcrop of rock at 43.52 degrees south.

The club has sent a circular to yacht owners in Tasmania and interstate to gauge the level of interest in reviving what will be the southernmost ocean race in the Australia – into the ‘Roaring Forties’ of the Southern Ocean.

Already a number of Hobart yacht owners, along with yachts from Sydney, Perth and Brisbane have indicated their enthusiasm to take up the challenge of racing to the very southernmost tip of Tasmania early in 2011.

Among the yachts is Natelle II, which now retired ocean racing yachtsman John Solomon sailed to victory in the last Mewstone Rock Race in 1985. Current owner Glenn Roper has invited Solomon to join him again for the revived race.

Mewstone Rock, officially its name is just Mewstone, is an oval 13.1 ha island composed of muscovite granite, with steep cliffs and a small flat summit and is part of the Pedra Branca Group lying 12km south-east of Maatsuyker Island and 22km off the south coast of Tasmania.

The island group was first sighted and named by the Dutch navigator Abel Janzoon Tasman in 1642 who wrote that it 'resembles a lion' on the voyage from Batavia during which he discovered, and named, Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) and New Zealand.

Mewstone specifically was given its name by the French navigator Tobias Furneaux in 1773 and has been mentioned in the logs of many subsequent early navigators who sailed around southern Tasmania on their voyages of exploration into the Pacific.

Tasmanian yachtsmen took up the challenge of sailing in a race around Mewstone back in the 1955-56 season with the inaugural race seeing line honours go Duncan McRae’s Kintail with Charles Calvert’s Huon Lass winning on handicap. The following season, the Mewstone Rock Race went to Katwinchar, a yacht sailed to Australia by Eddie Mossop which had raced in the 1951 Sydney Hobart Race.

During the next seven years ocean racing fell to low ebb in southern Tasmania and the 1957-58 Mewstone Race was cancelled because of insufficient entries. Only one yacht, Turua, skippered by Hedley Calvert, completed the Mewstone Race. Calvert won the race again the following year.

In 1964-65, six yachts started in the Mewstone Race but none reached the island, turned back by a vicious south-westerly gale. The following season, the race went to Bindaree (Graeme Blackwood) from John Bennetto’s Norla.

Records of the Mewstone Race during the 1970s and early 1980s are lacking in detail, but the last race to the rocky outcrop in the Southern Ocean was in 1985 when the stoutly built Natelle II, skippered by John Solomon took handicap honours.

The RYCT plans to start the 2011 Mewston Rock Race on a Friday evening so that competitors arrive at Mewstone in daylight, as the rock has no light. However, it will remain the choice of skippers as to whether they sail inside or outside Bruny Island.