Sydney Hobart - Terminal Velocity
by John Curnow, Editor, Sail-World AUS 28 Dec 2019 12:35 PST
Jason Close's J/133, Patriot, racing on Port Phillip © Australian Sailing
Day four dawns and speculation will soon begin as to the overall winner of the 75th Sydney Hobart. We made a call earlier in the middle of another piece, and it would seem that anything with a chance is already tied to the quay, and anything that might have been able to do something about it is also similarly all bound up.
Out on the water, anything left has two concerns to deal with. The first is light and variable, for the stiff breezes that brought all the quicks down with gusto has vacated the premises.
The second is that by and large all of them have a hull speed by virtue of being displacement boats, so the maths starts to become very obvious. There is one that may have been a factor had it all just hung in that much longer, for they are not bound by a terminal velocity. It is Jason Close’s J/133, Patriot.
Alas, with three and half hours to run (from time of writing 0715hrs AEDT), and 66nm to go, the maths here too seems to be foreboding. Not even cries of 'go you good thing' would appear to be enough. Close is one very dedicated campaigner (and a delightful, smiling human being), and with sailors like Lex O’Connor, Stu Schafer, Graham Smith and Brett Avery on board, you can bet they will be booking tickets for next year about now. Such is their motivation.
The same set of theorems would seem to be applied to Papillon, SailExchange, and Mistral too.