#rshyr – 11th overall (moving up two places from yesterday's provisional results) Is the best result yet for Irish sailor Barry Hurley in the Sydney Hobart Race. Here, Hurley reviews his performance for Afloat.ie readers
Well, another Sydney Hobart Race successfully finished. That's my fourth time finishing the race, and the third in a row on Breakthrough now.
[Read yesterday's Breakthrough race update here]
On the good side we had a really great race, the boat and sails held up well, and the crew dynamic made for a great atmosphere on board even through the tougher conditions.
Eleventh overall is my best result to date, but I have to admit that seventh in class is slightly disappointing.
It's obvious from the regular position reports when we lost time on the race course, but honestly I'm not sure yet exactly why we lost so much when we did. We did drop down to a slightly smaller kite for a while in the bigger seas, but I wouldn't have expected to lose so much ground. I'm not sure if we were just slow for a while, or we missed a shift, or perhaps we picked up some adverse current. There are certainly some learnings to be taken but there will be plenty time for that.
Over the next few weeks I'll study the tracker logs to figure out exactly what happened. It's somewhat comforting to see that over the last 24hrs of the race we were able to pull back places. The crew really dug deep to push hard in big wind when boats around us were throttling back. Perhaps we shouldn't be disappointed and should be content with a solid overall result against some of the best offshore sailors in the world.
Having just woken up the morning after a late finish last night we've just started to prepare the boat for the return trip. Next week back in Sydney we'll have time to relax sore muscles and review the race properly with all the facts to hand. In the meantime we'll enjoy the atmosphere and New Years celebrations here in Hobart.
It's a fantastic race which is always challenging. Our crew performed brilliantly, and the boat held up well. We all really enjoyed the race and hopefully we'll have an opportunity to come back and try again soon. I'm privileged to be part of such campaigns and to spend so much time offshore with some of my best friends.
We're all extremely proud to fly the flag for Ireland in these events and grateful for all the support from back home.
Read all Afloat's Sydney Hobart race updates here in one handy link plus WM Nixon's 2014 Race preview here
