Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race: How do we win this thing?

Brand new 'Avalanche' on travelift ready to launch ahead of the Rolex Sydney Hobart race © Hugh Ellis

How Do We Win This Thing?

It's not actually that long a story - though it took longer than expected, when last year, Hugh Ellis asked Gary Caulfield if he would like to do the 2015 Rolex Sydney Hobart on his Beneteau First 44.7 Twitch.

Caulfield thought: "why not?" He brought with him a lot of the guys he'd sailed with for years from the famous little Hobart veteran Toe Cutter, including her designer Robert Hick. For Ellis, this was a real step up. He'd been something of a latecomer by ocean racing standards.

"In my 20s I was bored with life. I was just working, paying the bills, you know how it is. And I read Kay Cottee's account of her single-handed voyage around the world on her little Cavalier 37. This apparently ordinary woman went non-stop around the planet while I was sitting here complaining about being bored! So I went down to the local yacht club, signed up, and the first time I raced, it was a light bulb moment."

Now Ellis had his own boat plus a really experienced, competitive crew.

"The core group has been sailing together for 15 years. They have won most of what they wanted to win. Some have won Hobarts. Everything is calm, always under control. Any problem is dealt with methodically. They just get on with the job. There's no yelling between the cockpit and the foredeck. Robert Hick only speaks when he has to speak, but you step back and listen."

Ellis' first Rolex Sydney Hobart was a strange affair. "It was easy all the way to Tasman Island, but that last leg, three times it went from 0 to 45, 50 knots. We lost all our headsails.

"You do your first Hobart to tick the box. You do your second because you are addicted."

When they got to Constitution Dock, Ellis asked Hick: "How do you win this thing?"

"Build a new boat," Hick replied. And Avalanche was conceived. It would be an 11-month gestation.

"The more I'd spent time with Hick on Toe Cutter, the more I'd wanted to do this," says Caulfield.

"A mix of old-style design, hand built, a completely different style focused on maximizing rating (the complex IRC handicapping system designed to give boats of all sizes and ages a winning chance).

"My last boat, Icefire, was a great boat to sail, very fast, but she rated terribly. It was very frustrating. We'd have a lot of fun racing, get there quickly, but never win because she rated so badly. It does come down to rating. I had been talking to Hick about it for years. With Hugh and me together, it made the costs better. It was too much of an opportunity."

So it was settled. Robert Hick would draw a boat specifically designed around the Rolex Sydney Hobart, then he would build it, piece by piece, in his Melbourne factory.

"It is hard to build a boat in Australia. Everything has gone off to China. But we wanted something built locally, and the more time you spend sailing with Robert, the more you realize how much he thinks about the Hobart and what it takes," Ellis says.

"It's all handmade. Every fitting, the carbon-fibre boom, the steering pedestals; everything has been done by hand in Robert's yard.

"Robert drew up the plans on his computer and sent them off to a factory where they cut four polystyrene moulds. We bought them back to Robert's yard on a truck over four different trips, joined them up – giving us the full mould for the hull. Then we watched them lay up the glass, carefully hand-sanding every layer. The hull looks so smooth – faultless," Ellis ended.

"It has been such an exciting project," Caulfield adds. "A while back we marked 4000 hours of labour that had gone into Avalanche. It is a lot more than that now. A Beneteau built in China probably gets a couple of hundred hours."

It's still about the Hobart, of course, but after so many hours together down at Hicks factory, for the designer, the crew, the two owners, sharing a beer, touching the hull and spars as they evolve, it has become a lot more than that.

Avalanche's design distils 70 years of Hobart history. A 40 footer takes three to four days to get to Hobart from Sydney. She may start in a brisk nor-easter but at some stage she will have to fight her way through a southerly, maybe two.

"We won't be planing downwind like a Chutzpah," Ellis says. "Our goal will be making the most of the upwind work, sailing to the best of our handicap, so that we are pulling time out of the purpose built 45 and 50 foot boats."

Avalanche was supposed to hit the water in October, but these things never go to plan. In the end, the crew had just two November weekends to play with her before the delivery voyage to the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia's Sydney marina.

Still, Ellis is confident. "It is a fairly simple boat. It's making all the right noises, hitting the right numbers, but we won't really know until we get out there on Boxing Day.

"To win the Hobart you need the right boat, a good crew, and when you get to Tasman Island, a lot of luck," the Victorian says.

Distilling Rolex Sydney Hobart History

She was one of the greatest maxi yachts of her day; winning line honours three times, first as Bumblebee IV in 1979, and then as Ragamuffin in 1988 and 1990 and she last raced to Hobart in 1993.

For the last 20 years she has been thrilling charterers in Queensland, but in 2015, Maxi Ragamuffin has been painstakingly brought back to full racing trim. On Boxing Day spectators can marvel again as the 36 year-old German Frers design punches her way out through the Heads, bringing back so many memories of one of the great eras of this remarkable race.

The big boats fighting it out for line honours in the Rolex Sydney Hobart have always held an irresistible glamour. These days it's the mesmerizing speed of a Wild Oats XI, the jaw-dropping acceleration of Comanche. Lithe, athletic, not an ounce of fat to be found anywhere in their exotic carbon-fibre hulls, these giant blue-water skiffs epitomize the modern, professional aura of elite sport in 21st century Australia.

In the 80's and 90's, the age of the great aluminium hulled maxis, it was all about resilience and power. The stately American Nirvana may have wrapped that power in Newport Rhode Island elegance; the pretty Siska in brash West Australian bravado, but it was still raw power.

When John Kahlbetzer's Bumblebee IV burst onto Sydney Harbour in 1979, she oozed brute force. A prize fighter, uninterested in a points decision when a knockout would do.

These big, heavy maxis roamed the world, from one big race to the next. They were little ships. Be it Valetta, Monaco or the CYCA marina in Rushcutters Bay, we plebs would gaze in wonder at the wealth, and yes, a different kind of power, that these giants represented.

"She is a very powerful boat, and she bites if you let her get away from you," muses Graham 'Scooter' Eaton, Maxi Ragamuffin's tireless boat manager come skipper. "She is a tank, state of the art in her day, no compromises. But a cruising boat compared with today's V70s."

Kahlebetzer won line honours in 1979, then took her overseas to beat the best in the world. In 1984 Syd Fischer bought her, called her Ragamuffin, and campaigned her in six Hobarts, winning line honours twice; in 1988 and 1990. However, soon the first carbon-fibre maxi, Windward Passage II, would bring the curtain down on the aluminium age.

It has been a mammoth job getting Maxi Ragamuffin back to racing trim. "She's been fully stripped and rebuilt from stem to stern," Eaton says "We took 95 percent of the deck gear off. All the winches were stripped and we found that 50 to 90 percent of each winch had to be rebuilt and there were no spare parts available anymore. Everything had to be custom made in Sydney.

It hasn't come cheap. Keith Batt, the CEO of Nant (Whisky) Distilling Company and Maxi Ragamuffin's owner, thinks there hasn't been much change out of a million dollars. Buying the boat was the cheap part. But he has no regrets.

"It's been just incredible, the enthusiasm and passion that everyone involved has brought to this project, which started as a marketing idea. I do some sailing and I asked if we could sponsor a boat in the race. When they came back with the cost, I thought we might just as well buy a whole boat. I googled boats for sale and there was Maxi Ragamuffin. I flew up to Queensland straight away. "

For Batt, his attitude to the boat is similar with his approach to whiskey making. "We make our whiskey in traditional ways, in restored stone buildings, built by convicts in the 1820s. We like tradition.

"This boat represents something about Australia. Everywhere she goes people come to see her because they remember her and tell their kids about her."

And in keeping with the whiskey tradition, Maxi Ragamuffin will carry a very unusual cargo: two barrels of whiskey will mature on the way to Hobart.

"In the past they used to mature whiskey by putting it in barrels as ships' ballast," Batt explains. "They discovered that this gives the whiskey lovely colour."

Of the Rolex Sydney Hobart, Batt says: "We're going to be trying hard, she is stunning to sail. To see our helmsman, Roger Snell, put her through her paces is amazing. He throws her around like 20 footer. She loves going upwind."

Other race news

Earlier this week, in a preliminary battle of the big boats, Wild Oats XI, took on the likes of Ragamuffin 100, Perpetual Loyal and Rambler 88. Racing was extremely close over the 14 Nautical Mile course, but it was Bob and Sandy Oatley's rebuilt Maxi that came out ahead reiterating that the record holder will be one to watch during this edition of the Rolex Sydney Hobart. As will the JPK 10.80 Courrier Leon, skippered by Frenchman Géry Trentesaux.

"I am now 57 and it is important for me to enjoy a couple of great races around the world every year. The Rolex Sydney Hobart was already on our schedule but of course with our overall win of the Rolex Fastnet Race, I was extremely motivated to put together a strong team for this race. Our crew includes Alexis Loison, winner of the Rolex Fastnet Race 2013 and Michel Quintin, a former Windsurfing World Champion," said Trentesaux, the two-time veteran of the Rolex Sydney Hobart.

www.rolexsydneyhobart.com

Rolex Sydney Hobart route - photo © RSHYR