Outside of overall victory for Howth's Gordon Maguire and line honours for County Meath's Jim Cooney, the corinthian team on the Howth Yacht Club entry Breakthrough have been talking about competing in the Sydney Hobart bluewater classic to media in Tasmania.

For HYC's Jonny White, racing in the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, let alone finishing it, was a dream that he has woken from and now accepts is real after crewing on HYC Breakthrough.

White, a member of the Irish crew that sailed on the Beneteau First 40 HYC Breakthrough, rated his debut in the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia event as: “Epic. Absolutely epic.”

“This is the first time for us all ... I don’t think it will be our last.”

Led by Irishman Darren Wright and representing the Howth Yacht Club in Ireland, the crew chartered the boat from her Australian owners Matthew Vadas and Jonathon Stone.

The Irishmen have a ‘bucket list’ of offshore races, and they had already sailed in dozens of Round Ireland and Rolex Fastnet Races. The Rolex Sydney Hobart was a ‘must do’ event.

Jonny White speaks to the press in Hobart

Breakthrough was an ideal choice of boat. Vadas last raced her in the 2016 Rolex Sydney Hobart to 52nd overall. In 2015, she was 12th, her best result after four previous finishes.

Speaking after HYC Breakthrough finished 92nd on line honours in 3 days 10 hours 43 minutes at 11.43 pm, Sunday, White smiled and said: “It’s quite a surreal experience, really.

“Coming from Ireland as a sailor, if you ever thought you could end up here, it was probably a dream. Was it a dream too far? Now, we realise it wasn’t.”

White is keen to re-live his dream. He said he hopes to return, and that the HYC Breakthrough crew do too. “[This is the] first time for us all ... I don’t think it will be our last.”

Darren Wright (skipper) with Kieran Jameson (at mast) in Hobart

Irish crewmate Keiran Jameson concurred with White, saying of his experience in the 628-nautical-mile ‘Blue Water Classic’: “It was really great. It had everything in it that we wanted.

“Bass Strait was a fantastic crossing, really exciting. Crossing Bass Strait for us was the dream … and we got a blow as we crossed it. That was perfect … couldn’t be better.”

Line Honours winner Jim Cooney, skipper of Comanche (second from left) with the Howth Breakthrough crew in Hobart

The number one racing boat in Australia has been declared the overall winner of the Rolex Sydney Hobart for a second time, as this morning Matt Allen was advised his TP52, Ichi Ban, was to yet again have its name engraved on the Tattersall Cup. Allen's crew includes sailing master Gordon Maguire (57), based in Sydney but originally from Howth Yacht Club in County Dublin. It is Maguire's fourth overall win of the Cup, the first being as far back as 1991 with John Storey in Atara.

Allen, a member of the Australian Olympic Committee and immediate past president of Australian Sailing, launched Ichi Ban in late December 2017. It has paid him back tenfold since. Some of the highlights include: 2017 – line and overall double in Newcastle Bass Island Race (its first race); won Rolex Sydney Hobart overall.

“To win again this year is just incredible,” Allen remarked, after sailing his 30th Sydney Hobart.

“We’ve spent so many years putting this boat together with two aims – winning the Sydney Hobart and winning the Blue Water Pointscore (BWPS),” the yachtsman said when told he had won both the race and the BWPS from Matt Donald and Chris Townsend’s Gweilo and Bob Steel and Craig Neil’s Quest – in both events.

In 2018, Allen skippered Ichi Ban to wins in the Australian Yachting Championships (won all eight races); Brisbane to Gladstone, Flinders Islet and Newcastle Bass Island and Bird Island races, and the CYCA’s Blue Water Pointscore. Ichi Ban was also named RORC Yacht of the Year.

In 2019, Ichi Ban’s wins included Division 1 of the Australian Yachting Championships; Adelaide Port Lincoln Race (also taking line honours), the Brisbane Hamilton Island, Flinders Islet and Newcastle Bass Island races. These performances landed the TP52 in the finals of the 2019 World Sailing Boat of the Year.

“I helped in the design process,” Allen said. “We put the right package together; the boat, crew and culture. We all just go and work and sail hard together; there are no egos on board. It’s a fulfilment of the sailing capability of the crew and the whole project.

“In 2016, I invited Gordon Maguire (a highly respected yachtsman) to have coffee with me and told him I was putting a new boat together. He has been with me since.

“Gordon, Anthony Merrington, Robert Greenhalgh, Dick Parker, Will (Oxley), James Paterson, Dav (Davin Conigrave) – his third win in nine races; Tim Sellars, Sean (O’Rourke), Charles Kosecki, James Corrie, Matiu (Te Hau), Ashley (Deeks) and Jeremy (Rae). A really amazing group of guys; experienced and calm.

“All the campaigns have really stepped up this year; people have tried to emulate what we have done. There’s no doubt about the competition in this race - in the 44 to 55 footers alone, it is incredible,” Allen said. “You wouldn’t find the competition we have in this race anywhere else in the world.

“We’ve had conditions to suit these boats the last few years in the Sydney Hobart. You go so fast in the north-easterlies; you go very fast. One year we’ll get southerlies again though.”

Allen has been blooded by some of legends in yachting. “I always remember my great sailing times with Lou Abrahams – he won two,” says Allen who raced with the great Victorian yachtsman when he won in 1983.

“I took some time out on that first afternoon to think about Lou and Trygve (Halvorsen), and others that I sailed with that meant something to me,” he said.

Reflecting on his and the crew’s win, Allen said, “It was right to the bitter end. We came around Tasman with a great lead on the others and then Gweilo came back within 2 miles. It would have been on – we would have had to match race them.

“We had to watch Quest (2008 winner, then 2015 winner as Balance, and runner-up to Ichi Ban in 2017 by just 10 minutes) too, and wondered how it would work out.”

Steel and Neil’s Quest was leading the race down the Tasmanian Coast, but found a parking lot that killed their chances.

“Envy Scooters is my previous TP52, and she was always there, sailing with us too,” said the yachtsman who thought the winners would come from the 60 footers down to as small as Daguet 3 (a Ker 46).

“We didn’t go upwind enough to open the door for the smaller boats. The closer we got to the finish, we thought the smaller boats would get shutdown. We were confident that if it came down to the TPs, we were in the box seat.”

In the end, TP52s claimed the top three places overall, with Ichi Ban first, Gweilo second and Quest third.

“We knew we had to beat Quest by over an hour to win,” Allen said of the yacht that has twice won the race and was looking good to win until they found a parking lot in Storm Bay,” Allen said.

“It was fast conditions on Friday night. They (Quest) had the pedal down and so did we.

We were always looking at Gweilo and my old boat, Envy Scooters (Barry Cuneo), too. They were always up to different things.

“We had our game plan. We didn’t alter it for them, but you always keep an eye on them. Once or twice we almost changed it, but decided against it.

“Ichi Ban is two years old now, so we know a lot more about it than we did in the beginning. There were a couple of things that we were still making up as we went along when we won in 2017.

“The boat is great. It’s a good all round boat and doesn’t really have a weakness. You never know what conditions you are going to get, but we are confident that we can push her hard and we do push her hard. It’s a great, fun boat to sail.”

Ichi Ban will next head to the Australian Yachting Championships, to be hosted by the Rolex Sydney Hobart finishing partner Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania, starting in three days’ time.

“We’ll go there to try and defend the title we won last year. It will be predominantly the same crew as the Hobart minus a couple. Three days of sailing in some of the trickiest waters in Australia…”

Hobart Harbour’s localised calm in the hours of darkness is almost a freak of nature, for it can settle in even when there’s quite a decent breeze in the nearest piece of half open water. Last year, it put paid to Matt Allen and Gordon Maguire’s chances of an overall win in the Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race 2018 with Ichi Ban, as they sat totally becalmed for an hour in the dark within a mile of the finish, and their considerable lead drained away.

They’ve put that memory to bed with an impressive overall win in this year’s 75th Anniversary race and its big fleet of 157 boats. But this time round, it has been the turn of another boat with Howth connections, Darren Wright’s First 40 HYC Breakthrough, to suffer the agonies of the calm small hours of the Hobart waterfront.

HYC Breakthrough’s tactics through Sunday’s daylight racing over the final stages had proved spot on, and she moved up to hold sixth in Division 6 for quite a while, going even better to make that fifth in class and first of the First 40s in the last ten miles while the breeze still held good as darkness fell.

Yet you’d only to look at the dropping speeds of the boats ahead as they got to within a mile or two of the finish to know that it would be a miracle if HYC Breakthrough held onto that fifth place in class, as the higher-rated First 40 she was indicated as narrowly leading had only managed to crawl across the line. And sure enough, as the Howth crew got within shouting distance of the finish, their speed went to almost nothing.

Inexorably, their fifth place returned to being a sixth. It’s a sure enough sixth, as the next boat is 25 miles astern. But still, that fifth - and first of the First 40s - was so tantalisingly in their grasp…..

But at least they were moving - you could feel the agonies of crews who’d got to within half a mile of the finish, and had to get their boats to finally glide across seemingly more by will-power than anything else. However, the Howth boat, having been virtually halted down harbour, seemed to carry her own private zephyr almost to the line, but then there was that final windless effort of will to get them across at 23:43 hrs local time (12.43 Irish) and place sixth in Division 6, second in the First 40s, and 11th overall in the Corinthian Division, which is probably their most significant achievement of all

With the finish line safely astern at last, all changes, The tension lifts, and the fact that the next boat in class is now all of 25 miles astern – for there’d been a calm patch over the next Division 6 group – adds to the relaxed mood as shore supporters take the berthing lines and the party begins.

It has been an extraordinary long-distance project, with the strains of extended lines of communication between Howth and Sydney becoming extreme at times. And inevitably a crew who have put so much into simply being available to get there at all will find that some aspects of a ten year old boat are inevitably not quite as good as they might have hoped.

But while Darren Wright and his project co-ordinator Kieran Jameson and shore managers Ian & Judith Malcolm may have had less time preparation time beforehand in Sydney than they might have wished, despite the fact that even with the 75th Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race being top of the bill plumb in the middle of Christmas, there was a discernible slowing down in the Sydney Harbour marine service industry as the festive season approached.

But as so often happens, by tapping into the Irish maritime mafia in Australia, they very quickly found the right people to help them push the required buttons, and HYC Breakthrough went forth well able to take on the challenges of the 628 mile course, producing a good result that the crew and their supporters have well earned.

Together with Gordon Maguire’s overall win in Hobart with Ichi Ban, and Shane Diviney’s First in Division 2 with Chinese Whisper, it’s a very impressive way for Howth Yacht Club to round out being the Mitsubishi Motors “Sailing Club of the Year 2019”.

Race tracker here

Darren Wright’s First 40 HYC Breakthrough has had a good day of it in the closing sections of the Rolex Sydney-Hobart with the forecast nor’easter fulfilling its promise. With 20 miles to go, the Howth crew in the only all-Irish entry were revelling in the sailing, enjoying speed bursts of 11 knots and more in a performance which has brought them back up to sixth in Division 6, and 10th overall in the IRS Corinthian Division.

But as Sunday evening settles in on Hobart in Tasmania, the inevitable easing of the breeze close inshore is already taking place. Although the leaders in Division 6 are closing in on the finish line in the heart of the city’s waterfront, when French/Australian Pierre Gal (NSW) and a crew of all the talents on the new Lombard 34 crossed first on the water at 19:11:00 hrs local time (09:11 in Ireland), the blistering pace they’d been setting for much of the day had been reduced to three knots.

The likely finishing sequence for IRC6, with the HYC crew holding sixth position in their class

Close together with 2 miles to go are the Tasmanian Div 6 handicap leader Willie Smith’s Philosopher (Shaun Tiedemann) and Phil Moloney’s Papillon, an Archambault 40, both still carrying breeze and making 7 knots. They’re followed by the First 40.7 Ocean Crusaders and the First 40 Mayfair, and with HYC Breakthrough (now with 18 miles to go) sixth on the water and sixth on handicap, she is achieving one of her crew’s ambitions in being in the top three in the flotilla of First 40s.

After three days and eight hours, the racing is still very close in the Sydney Hobart race as HYC crewman Luke Malcolm's photo reveals

But although they’ve the very solid margin of a 20 miles lead on the next boat (for Breakthrough really lived up to her name during this Sunday’s sailing) the notorious “Derwent Drift” in the final miles to the finish is likely to settle in as night falls, and this Corinthian crew of well-tested HYC shipmates is going to need patience and skill to reach the line in a time which is in keeping with the rest of today’s sparkling performance.

Tracker here

As the daylight of Sunday morning strengthens along the east coast of Tasmania, Irish interest in the Rolex Sydney-Hobart race 2019 turns towards Darren Wright’s First 40 HYC Daybreak in Division 6.

We can re-focus confident in the knowledge that if you take every possible permutation of Irish linkage into account, we can claim an interest in the indisputable Line Honours Winner (SuperMaxi Comanche, with Jim Cooney of County Meath), the Division 1 (and probably overall) winner Ichi Ban (sailing master Gordon Maguire of Howth), and the Division 2 winner Chinese Whisper (navigator Adrienne Cahalan of Offaly and crewmember Shane Diviney of Howth).

But only 21 boats of the 157 starters are now comfortably finished. Out at sea – sometimes very far out at sea - the smaller craft have been having a frustrating night of it with winds all over the place and very confused seas as they’ve tried to make to windward in what was expected to be a brief southerly.

HYC Breakthrough navigator Rick De Neve in the Trophy Room of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia in Sydney before the start of the race to Hobart. The Howth-based Rick’s day job is as an international jetliner captain
Brief it may be, but at one stage there was plenty of it, and HYC Breakthrough was down to No 2 and a reef in the main as she crashed through the night. Navigator Rick De Neve reports that they’re trying to make some westing to be better placed for an eventual wind swing back to the northeast which seems to be filling in more quickly towards the coast, but meanwhile the windward slugging in a southerly has had a distinct hint of the Antarctic about it after taking their leave from Sydney in a serious heatwave.

For the time being, their westward tack has impinged on their overall and class placing, though even as we write, HYC Breakthrough is getting up to speed again. Until they took the plunge, they’d been 5th in Division 6th and second overall in the Corinthian Division, but at 1830 hrs Irish time they were (hopefully temporarily) back at tenth in class.

Crazy name, successful boat – the Tasmania-based Sydney 36 Special Willie Smith’s Philosopher has become the boat to beat in Division 6

Even at that, they have seen off several First 40s which were giving them a hard time in the early stages of the race, but at the front of the class the Tasmanian-based Sydney 36 Special called Willie Smith’s Philosopher (Australian boat names really are something else) is setting a ferocious pace which will be very challenging to overcome, even with more than a hundred miles still to race.

Race Tracker here 

Matt Allen’s Botin 52 Ichi Ban is now safely across the finish line in Hobart to correct into the Sydney Hobart overall leader position after completing the 628-mile course in just 2 days 6 hours and 18 minutes, despite stages of the race being plagued by light and flukey winds.

Ichi Ban’s strong overall placing was indicated by the fact that she was very well up the fleet at 11th on line honours, finishing among much larger boats. In the end, as he made a workmanlike job of dealing with the tricky final miles in the Derwent River, Ichi Ban Sailing Master Gordon Maguire’s only real challenger was another TP 52, Matt Donald & Chris Townsend’s Gweilo from New South Wales.

Gweilo rates exactly the same as Ichi Ban on 1.403, but even with a breeze to speed things up covering the ground, Gweilo was all of 34 minutes astern at the finish.

With 15 boats finished as of noon Irish time, the onset of darkness in Hobart has seen the bite go from the breeze, and the next boats due in are currently showing slow speeds as the traditional “Derwent Drift” sets in. Thus Ichi Ban’s position is looking good, but some very low-rated boats far at sea still have a chance of toppling her if some slightly unlikely wind scenarios develop.

The JV62 Chinese Whisper, navigated by Adrienne Cahalane and with Shane Diviney in the crew, was seventh on line honours at Hobart, and currently leads IRC Division 2. Photo: Judith Malcolm

Meanwhile, the only all-Irish contender, Darren Wright’s First 40 HYC Breakthrough, is currently one of the fastest boats in Division 6, listed as making 7.7 knots with 164 miles to sail. Only one boat in class – the new Lombard 34 Mistral (Pierre Gal) – is showing better speed, but Breakthrough retains sixth in class, just 11 miles astern of the leader in a 20-boat class in which the competition is very hot indeed.

The SuperMaxi Comanche, all one hundred feet of her with a huge beam to provide impressive sail-carrying power, has overcome the tricky winds and calms of the Derwent River to take line honours in the Tasmanian morning in the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race, despite the best effort of slimmer boats to take away her shrinking lead.

Jointly owned by Jim Cooney and Samantha Grant, Comanche seemed to have a commanding lead coming south offshore, and benefitted from staying further east than the rest of the fleet.

Jim Cooney steered his Sydney-based super maxi over the Castray Esplanade finish line in Hobart after taking command of the race during yesterday morning. Comanche did not relinquish from that point, although Seng Huang Lee’s SHK Scallywag (Hong Kong) came very close at one point.

But the inshore work towards the finish poses its own problems, and Christian Beck’s InfoTrack seemed like a possible danger. But in the end, Comanche’s time across the line had her 44 minutes ahead on the water by the time Beck and his crew made their slow finish.

Nine times line honours winner Wild Oats XI, skippered for the Oatley family by Mark Richards, has had a frustrating race of it, but pulled back the leaders towards the finish. Nevertheless, as InfoTrack completed the course, the Oatley boats still had 6.3 miles to sail and was making only 4.8 knots.

Ichi Ban Leads on IRC

As the day makes on in Tasmania, the next group of finishers are hoping that the northerly wind will be reinforced by the makings of a sea breeze. As of 2240 hrs, Matt Allen’s Ichi Ban with Gordon Maguire is indicated as narrowly leading IRC overall, but she is still 87 miles from the finish, though making good at 11.8 knots – a significantly better speed than any of her closest rivals.

The most directly Irish contender, Darren Wright’s First 40 HYC Breakthrough, has been staying schtum and getting on with racing. It’s an approach which seems to be doing no harm at all, for although she still has 275 miles to sail, HYC Breakthrough has now moved up to 6^th in IRC Division 6.

There’s nothing like the spectacle of a flotilla of fighting Supermaxis streaking away southwards from the start of the annual Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race to snap us out of the Christmas torpor. In fact, with the time difference between Ireland and Australia, for many, the Christmas will still be meandering along as things get going in Sydney Harbour in what is, for us, the small hours of Thursday morning.

But whether it’s going to be a fast-moving spectacle remains to be seen. At least the wind is forecast to be in the easterly arc, giving hope that the smoke haze of the Australian bush fires will have been blown inland to leave the handsome harbour looking its picture-postcard best. And in recent days the temperatures have dropped to much more civilized levels to enable newly-arrived crews – such as the very Corinthian sailors who will be racing the First 40 HYC Breakthrough – a more reasonable chance of acclimatizing themselves.

The HYC Breakthrough crew after completing their 24-hour test are (left to right) Simon Knowles, Kieran Jameson, Jonny White, Rick De Neve, Luke Malcolm, Wendy Tuck of EastSail, Darren Wright, Colm Bermingham and (foreground) Emmet Sheridan

But at this stage the wind predictions for the race are still far from precise, and as previous races have shown, volatility is the name of the game. So when one of the race’s proven stars such as Mark Richards, longtime skipper of the Oatley family’s 100ft Supermaxi Wild Oats XI, quotes a forecast, it’s difficult to resist the temptation to assume he’s throwing shapes to confuse his rivals as his skinny flying machine aims for her tenth line honours win.

For what it’s worth, today (Monday) Richards said:

“Today’s forecast indicates we will start in a light to moderate north-easterly, and then have a change out of the south during the first night. If you position your yacht in the right spot for that change, and your opposition doesn’t get it right, then you might gain 50 or 60 miles over them. That’s the big challenge.”

Despite being dismasted with significant deck damage just six weeks before the start, top contender Wild Oats XI is race-ready again
Makes it so simple, really. But in a race which is also being predicted as being as much about brain as brawn, all the navigators - such as Offaly-born Adrienne Cahalan on the Judel Vrolik 62 Chinese Whispers (ex-Jethou, with the crew including Howth’s Shane Diviney) - are taking about several “transition stages”, and the challenge of reading them right.

So in a fleet now of 157 boats, ranging in size from 33ft to 100ft, the possible successful permutations in the IRC overall handicap race for the coveted Tattersall Cup are only something which can be disentangled as the race proceeds, whereas the raw race for line honours is something which becomes clear from the get-go.

Like it or not, the SuperMaxis get that initial attention, and in truth they deserve much of it, for like virtually all the rest of the fleet, there isn’t a “new in 2019” boat among them. Australians are maniacs for modifying boats. Thus when we talk of the hundred foot Wild Oats XI racing for her tenth line honours win, we’re talking of a boat which started life as a 90-footer, but has been undergoing modification ever since, so much so that the recent potential disaster of being dismasted with significant deck damage just six weeks before the start not only was an opportunity to demonstrate the Wild Oats campaign’s powers of resilience, but the round-the-clock repair and replacement work facilitated opportunities for yet further mods.

In fact the only hundred footer which is still largely as originally designed is Jim Cooney’s Comanche (the “Boat from Ballivor”), but others like Peter Harburg’s Black Jack have received some surgical enhancement. For this year’s race, the lightwind flyer Black Jack is racing for the Yacht Club de Monaco, thereby bringing up the overseas entries to eight, and the crew includes America’s Cup legend Brad Butterworth and other mega-talents more usually associated with George David’s all-conquering Rambler 88, so if the wind stays as light as some forecasters suggest, Black Jack might well be one to watch.

In the body of the fleet, we find the Howthmen with their First 40 HYC Breakaway, registered to the ownership of Darren Wright HYC, and proudly flying the Irish tricolour. It’s a brave campaign, for the reality is that the entire crew are Sydney-Hobart Race virgins. When you’re in a fleet where people like Dublin-born sailmaker Noel Drennan on the Maxi 72 URM is doing his 32nd Hobart Race, while Adrienne Cahalan is on her 28th, this blank slate does loom large, but they seem to have been blessed into the quickest possible experience-acquisition programme since they arrived.

This has been facilitated by Wendy Tuck, the first woman skipper to win the Clipper Round the World Race overall – she did it in the 2017-2018 edition. These days, she has a key introductory role with EastSail, the Australian organization which arranged the transfer of Breakthrough, and she sailed with the Howth team in their mandatory 24-hour offshore test which fast-tracked them into the Hobart lane.

Kieran Jameson with his support team in Sydney
Since then they’ve been test and training sailing as much as possible while the shore team of Ian and Judith Malcolm have been dealing with the myriad of essential requirements. Nevertheless, it’s something of a leap in the dark, and HYC Breakthrough will have been a big achiever if she does well against the other First 40s – seven of them – and the similarly-rated Sydney 38s, while anything remotely like a class podium position would be massive.

The classic Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race of 628 miles is an unusual mixture of open water sailing followed by inshore work approaching the finish in the Derwent River to Hobart
Meanwhile, in the exalted heights of the superstars, the combo of owner-skipper Matt Allen and Howth ex-Pat sailing master Gordon Maguire with the superb Botin 52 Ichi Ban 2 are still seen as a good all-round bet for the Tattersall Cup. But as ever, after close-fought battles out in open water, the final place may well be decided by the time of day or night you enter the Derwent River, with its tricky diurnal wind patterns, in order to get to the finish in the heart of Hobart.

The “Derwent Drift” – with spectator craft disturbing the almost windless water – is part of the Sydney-Hobart package. Photo: Rolex/Studio Borlenghi

Race Tracker here

In Australia, the unprecedented heatwave is so totally engulfing the continent that respected observers of maritime weather patterns such as Matt Allen, owner/skipper of the very special Botin-designed TP52 development Ichi Ban 2, reckon that we’ll have to be a few days nearer the start of the 75th Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race next Thursday before anyone can begin to predict wind and weather movements with any real degree of accuracy.

Allen – whose dynamic symbiosis with his sailing master Gordon Maguire is one of the most successful partnerships of world sailing – is reckoned to have the boat which is the best all-round bet to take the Tattersall’s Cup for the overall IRC win - the “real sailors” Hobart prize.

The Allen/Maguire team certainly have form and then some, as Ichi Ban 2 was tops in the Tattersall’s in 2017, and in 2018 she was right on to do it again, but sat in that agonizing total calm of night for which Hobart’s Derwent River is notorious for just long enough for the trophy to go to Tasmania’s own RP 66 Alive (Philip Turner), with Ichi Ban finally gliding across in a zephyr to take second.

The Tasmanian-owned RP 66 Alive became a local hero after narrowly winning the 2018 Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race from Ichi Ban 2.
Alive’s win was a local hero success which has spurred the Tasmanian authorities to much more positive moves to make the best of their association with this classic 628 mile offshore race. And at the moment Tasmania certainly looks like the promised land as a destination, as it’s significantly cooler than the mainland. Meanwhile, to the north in New South Wales, what with exploding bush fires and exceptional heatwaves, Sydney actually finds itself at the heart of a region which has declared a State of Emergency.

Quite what happens when you try to get a major event under way in a place which is under a State of Emergency would be a new area of experience for many sporting organisations. But the nature of the Sydney-Hobart Race is such that going ahead with it regardless is surely the best thing that the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia can do in the circumstances.

Thee Cruising Yacht Club of Australia’s clubhouse/marina complex at Rushcutter’s Bay on Sydney Harbour

Those circumstances are something that we in the Northern Hemisphere can only wonder at, what with Storm Elsa doing her December best to obliterate Galway City on Wednesday night, and the real prospect of some savagely wintry weather in the run-in to Christmas.

But be of good cheer. Tomorrow (Sunday) at 04:19 UTC, the Winter Solstice 2019 will take place. Despite the battering and abuse that poor old Planet Earth is taking from the most aggressive and destructive species that has ever inhabited it during its billions of years of evolving and developing in the unique way which eventually enabled the complex but sometimes brutal animal which is mankind to come into being, tomorrow this extraordinary life-giving phenomenon takes place yet again.

In the small hours, the barely measurable mid-winter wobbling will start to show a distinct tendency to make the accelerating alteration which will mean that here in the Northern Hemisphere, our time of natural daylight will at last start to increase again, and most of us will be grateful for it.

We know there’s a bit of a wobble (or whatever you want to call it), because for a few days the dawn continues to arrive later, yet the sunset starts to come later too. Nowadays, with universal and excessive electrical light, all this may seem less important. But time was when people who were impatient for Spring to arrive avidly followed each evening’s marginal lengthening of the daylight.

One such was the genius American yacht designer and builder Nathanael Greene Herreshoff (1848-1938), a martyr to rheumatism who craved the sun. His exceptional creativity is celebrated in the Herreshoff Marine Museum in Bristol, Rhode Island. There, it’s mind blowing to contemplate the variety and achievement of Herreshoff’s many designs. But one homely little exhibit which I particularly recall from a visit more than twenty years ago is a special piece of wall-paper.

Genius pushed to the limit……while Nathanael Herreshoff designed and built many sensible and seaworthy vessels, when required he could push yacht design and construction to the limits and beyond, and his successful America’s Cup defender Reliance of 1903 was one of the most extreme racing machines ever to be involved in the AC.
Apparently it had been in a west-facing room in the Herreshoff homestead, and when Mrs Herreshoff had that room re-decorated, the new wall-paper in the reveal of the main window provided enough clear space between its decorations for Captain Nat to conveniently record (in pencil if I remember rightly) the slow but sure progress of the sunset to the north, noting for instance that on some date in April, the sun set for the first time to the north of the Adams’s barn or some such ad hoc marker.

Nathanel Greene Herreshoff, the “Wizard of Bristol”. He so craved daylight and sunshine that he used newly-fitted wallpaper to keep a record of the advancing time of sunset at his home. Despite chronic illness and working himself to the edge of breakdown in expanding his family’s boat-building firm, he lived to the age of 90.
Quite what Mrs Herreshoff made of the great man’s disfigurement of her new wallpaper we can only guess. But we can understand his own need for encouragement. Yet today we find that the dark days are by-passed, such that the current focus of Irish sailing this weekend is almost entirely on the Southern Hemisphere and Australia, despite heatwaves and States of Emergency.

Edward Bransfield of Ballinacurra

In a year in which the pioneering achievements of seagoing explorer and Antarctic discoverer Edward Bransfield of Ballinacurra in East Cork have finally been given a tangible memorial in his home place (encouraged and reported by Tom MacSweeney of this parish) in time for the Bicentenary of his discovery of Antarctica in 1820, perhaps we find ourselves in the northern winter solstice thinking more than we should be of sailing under the sun of the southern hemisphere.

Southern Hemisphere plus……the Bransfield Memorial at Ballinacurra, sculpted by Matt Thompson, will commemorate the discoverer of the Antarctic continental landmass in 1820. Photo: Tony Whelan
But when we remember that Bransfield’s ultimately successful seafaring career began with being forcibly enlisted at the age of 18 by a Royal Navy press gang rapaciously kidnapping any able-bodied men they could find in the pleasant farmland of East Cork, there’s food for thought. Indeed, there’s at least an academic study and maybe a book on the “beneficial” effects on what is now claimed to be Irish maritime history by the recruiting methods of the Human Resources Department of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars.

For although Bransfield eventually became a successful part of the system which had so ruthlessly torn him away from home, rising to become a ship’s captain and achieving the ultimate respectability of retiring not to Ballinacurra but to Brighton, there were others who always dreamed of getting out of enforced naval service, or at least following a different path a sea.

One such was William Brown of Foxford in Mayo. His story is complex, but while serving in the American navy he was press-ganged into the Royal Navy, yet escaped by scuttling the ship in which he was unwillingly serving. Eventually he ended up in Argentina and when war broke out with Spain, he was instrumental in creating the Argentine navy, with which - as Almirante Brown – his founding role continues to be celebrated today, most notably in Argentina by having several warships recalling him over the years, and no less than four football clubs named in his honour.

You need to go into the Southern Hemisphere for a uniform like this – Admiral William Brown of Foxford, County Mayo, founder of the Argentine Navy.
The Argentine Navy’s destroyer Almirante Brown is the latest ship to be named after the Mayo-born founder
It’s the latter honour which would be most readily appreciated in sports-mad Australia, where there’s no doubting the sense of bewilderment as the weather goes crazy with hyper-heatwaves, and the incomparable Sydney Harbour – usually bright and pristine at this height of summer – is spending much of its time obscured in haze which may thicken to smoke from the tens of thousands of acres of bush fires around the city.

Smoke obscured Sydney Harbour

Nevertheless in and around the famous if sometimes smoke-obscured harbour, there’s an impressive fleet of 164 boats in the final stages of preparation for the 75th Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race As it happens, this turnout is large by modern standards, but that’s because today’s safety standards are much more rigorous, whereas in the early races, as 1950’s overall winner Jim Hardy recalls, doing the Hobart Race in those days didn’t even require guard-rails, while an emergency medical kit consisted of an extra package of bandages…..

Thus the fleet for the 75th RSHR is the fourth biggest in the race’s history but is much bigger than the 100-120 numbers which have been raced in recent years. Last week, we looked at the boats of Irish interest in the fleet, and the word now is that the First 40 HYC Breakthrough has successfully completed her mandatory 24 hours of offshore sailing, and she and her ship’s complement are now totally RSHR-compliant.

The First 40 HYC Breakthrough (Darren Wright) returning to the CYCA marina yesterday in total heatwave conditions after completing her mandatory RSHR 24 hours offshore in the Tasman Sea. Photo: Judith Malcolm
It has been a length process organised by sailing master Kieran Jameson, and though it started as a bareboat charter, for the duration of the race HYC Breakthrough will actually be registered as owned by Darren Wright, which is a decidedly thorough way of going at the challenge.

In fact, the Wright effect has been much in evidence in Sydney sailing this past week, as Darren’s son Rocco – already noted as one of Ireland’s leading Optimist sailors – milled his way through the local opposition in the Sydney Sailing series to such good effect in the Open Optimist Class that at the competition’s completion, he was discarding a second.

It’s not something to be dismissed lightly, as the sailors he bested included one with the surname of Beashel, and around Sydney Harbour, the Beashel family are dinghy sailing royalty. Further to build on the Wright effort, Rocco’s sister Siena won the Optimist Intermediate division overall, so between them they’ve set the father and his crew on HYC Breakthrough a high standard for the Hobart challenge.

“Now it’s your turn, Dad”. The new Sydney Sailing Optimist Champion Rocco Wright with his father Darren on the First 40 HYC Breakthrough, which will compete in the 75th Rolex Sydney Hobart Race next Thursday. The rules of the RSHR stipulate that crew members must be at least 18 years old, so Rocco won’t be able to help the oldies with their challenge. 
That said, HYC Breakthrough’s realise that they’re up against 163 other boats which include some of the best racing machines in the world, sailed by superb crews whose motivation to do will has been ratcheted up even further by this 75th anniversary special. By next Tuesday, the dust and smoke may not have settled, but at least the RSHR fleet’s departure from it will have come much nearer, so we’ll take a look then at how things are shaping up before disappearing into Christmas, from which next day a very handy escape hatch can be found with the RSHR 2019 Race Tracker.

Meanwhile, here’s the vid which gets the race’s flavour when the going is good:

Back in 1991 when the world seemed a much simpler place, a three-crew Irish team - using shrewdly-selected offshore racing boats chartered in Australia - took part in the then-popular International Southern Cross Series, which was built around a programme of inshore and offshore races of varying length culminating in the 630-mile Sydney-Hobart Race itself.

Australian ex-Pat John Storey (he was born in Meath) was at the heart of it with his own Farr 43 Atara, where his skipper and the Team Captain was Harold Cudmore. In fact, Cork provided much of the muscle, as the late Joe English skippered the “small boat”, the David 36 Extension – a former Sydney-Hobart overall winner - while the mid-sized team member was known as “the Howth boat”, as her crew was built around Kieran Jameson and Gordon Maguire.

The boat herself was the Davidson 40 Beyond Thunderdome, a name expressive of way-out Australian culture at the time – think Mad Max when Mel Gibson was in his popular prime – and the very fact of having an Irish team in the Southern Cross challenge on the other side of the world also caught the mood of the moment, for back home the economy was starting to get a move on after the glacially sluggish 1980s.

When the going was good…..the Davidson 40 Beyond Thunderdome scoring well for Ireland in the early stages of the 1991 Southern Cross series

And the Irish Southern Cross team certainly got a move on. They were leading, with Gordon Maguire in particular at the helm of Beyond Thunderdome on top form. But then in a windward slugging match in the final pre-Hobart Race inshore event, an Australian boat on port collided with them, dismasting Thunderdome so totally that her series was over.

Yet victory was pulled from the wreckage. Gordon Maguire was immediately transferred to Atara to be top helm under Harry Cudmore’s command for the race to Hobart. As for Beyond Thunderdome, eventually she got complete points redress for the crash and for missing the race to Hobart. And meanwhile, Atara won the Sydney-Hobart race overall to make sure that Ireland won the 1991 Southern Cross Series.

Atara for Ireland! Back in 1991-92 when life was still mostly pre-internet, magazine covers could speak for everyone

It was all a life-changing experience for Gordon Maguire. The young Howth sailor – already a multiple champion at home – was soon swept up into the vibrant Australian sailing scene, such that while he has achieved success all over the world – including several Whitbread/Volvo Race victories – Australia is now his home, and he is best known for further top performances in many majors including more Hobart success with his overall wins currently totalling three.

But he has maintained his strong family links with Howth where his father Neville – a champion sailor now in his sprightly nineties – continues to be an active member. Thus twenty-one months ago in February 2018 with two Howth-crewed boats racing in the RORC Caribbean 600 from Antigua when Gordon Maguire turned up with his top lieutenants to race an American Maxi 72, there was something of a club reunion.

Gordon Maguire in his role as one of Australia’s leading sailors, at a pre-Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race press conference

Much came out of that Caribbean 600 campaign after the Howth YC squad had secured a first in one class (for “Sailor of the Year” Conor Fogerty with his Sunfast 3600 Bam) and second in another (with the Lombard 46 Pata Negra chartered by Michael Wright for a programme managed by Kieran Jameson).

But what didn’t emerge was a 2019 campaign to return to Antigua, for the Wright team had set their sights on the Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race starting on December 26th 2019, and Kieran Jameson was set the task of securing a suitable boat in Australia.

It says everything about Kieran Jameson’s enduring enthusiasm for offshore racing that, 28 years after organising the Beyond Thunderdome campaign, his zest for it all is undiminished despite the fact that the charter market in the countdown to the 2019 Hobart race has been much more challenging.

Researching for a suitable boat was well under way by September 2018, but after years of the annual classic seeing entry levels hovering around the hundred mark and sometimes not even rising to that figure, 2019 is the 75th Anniversary. Entries have shot up to the 160 mark. And the greatest increase is in the 35 to 45ft size - precisely the range Jameson was targeting.

There were sleepless nights in trying to close a deal on a First 40, the Howth team’s ideal target. For although the marque has been in Australia for ten years now after making a mighty debut by taking first and second overall in the 2009 race, like their predecessor the First 40.7 they’ve proven to be continually competitive, and in size terms they’re a very manageable proposition for a team coming from the other side of the world, and the Howth team have been campaigning chartered First 40s in major race – with silverware to show for it - since 2014.

 First experience with a First 40 – Kieran Jameson at the helm of Thursday’s Child in the stormy Middle Sea Race of 2014. In the same boat in the 2016 RORC Caribbean 600, the Wright team from Howth took third in class. Photo: Brian Turvey

Fortunately through EastSail, the Australian charter mega-agency, they linked up with the First 40 Breakthrough, originally called Chancellor, which acquired her current name when she came under the ownership of medical research professors Matthew Vadas and Jonathan Stone, who had recently made a significant shared discovery in their field of research.

In the 2014 Rolex Sydney-Hobart, she was raced under the command of Matthew Vadas, but a strong Irish link was established as the sailing master was noted Malta-based offshore racing talent Barry Hurley (originally of Cobh) sailing his fourth Hobart challenge. He, in turn, had recruited Dun Laoghaire’s Kenneth Rumball (on his third RSHR) and his brother Alexander together with Catherine Halpin, and for a while, they were right in contention for the overall prize.

But the eventual winner, the Farr 43 Wild Rose (Roger Hickman), somehow got away from them down at Bass Strait, and while Breakthrough finished with a praiseworthy 12th overall, Hurley – who in November 2014 had taken a first in class in the Middle Sea Race – felt it was something of a missed opportunity.

These days, the two professors no longer contemplate doing the decidedly rugged race to Hobart personally. But they like the boat so much they’ve kept her on for personal cruising and less demanding races in the Sydney area, and it seems they were ready to be persuaded that a crew from Howth would be acceptable to take Breakthrough – re-named HYC Breakthrough for the duration - on a bareboat basis for the 75th Anniversary RSHR 2019.

But getting the boat in place is only the beginning of it. In today’s fast-moving world, people who felt sure they’d be available on the date to go to Australia find personal circumstances suddenly changing, and Kieran Jameson has found himself sorting and re-sorting a personnel roster which has only been completely finalized this week.

Heading the list is Darren Wright, current Irish Half Ton Champion with Mata, while Kieran Jameson fulfills the role – as required by the RSHR – of Sailing Master. Colm Bermingham and Rick de Neve (a co-owner of Mata) are listed as navigators, while Simon Knowles - in addition to other roles – is on the strength as tactician. The rest of the crew are Johnny White, Luke Malcolm, Emmet Sheridan and David Wright, and while they’re all proven sailors in Irish waters, although the boat has already been passed as fit for the big race by the regulators, the crew will have to put in 24 hours together sailing hard at sea on HYC Breakthrough as soon as they’ve all assembled in Sydney.

Darren Wright (left) with the crew of Mata after winning the 2019 Irish Half Ton Championship during the Sovereigns Cup Regatta in Kinsale in June.
Because of the significant increase in fleet numbers over the usual RSHR turnout, demands on waterfront facilities and services are at a premium, but a high priority has been put on getting the sail wardrobe sorted, using the services of UK Sailmakers and Ian Short sails in Sydney.

And the fleet increase does mean that there will be much improved boat-for-boat racing featuring in the Hobart campaign, so Breakthrough will find herself being kept up to speed by the presence of five First 40s and seven comparably-rated Sydney 38s. Regardless of the overall picture, they’ll have the extra interest of a race-within-a-race.

Nevertheless, the feeling of very extended lines of communication is sensed as you realize that the entire crew is making the journey from Ireland. But a marker has already been put down by 28-year-old Luke Malcolm – a product of the HYC & ICRA Under 25 scheme who is now a full-time sailor – going out ahead two weeks early to start sorting the boat, and last week he sensibly sent back a basic but very real photo of Breakthrough just to reassure everyone that their boat for the big race was ready and waiting exclusively for them.

We have a boat…..the First 40 Breathough waiting in Sydney as photographed by Luke Malcolm last week, and passed by the regulators as fit for the RSHR 2019. Now her crew from Howth have to put in 24-hours of intensive sea time. Photo: Luke Malcolm
Shane Diviney on wire and Luke Malcolm (helm) campaigning a Fireball on the European circuit. Photo courtesy Judith Malcolm

In Sydney, he soon linked up with Shane Diviney with whom he used to campaign a Fireball on the European circuit, who likewise has gone professional, and for the RSHR is aboard the Australian Judel Vrolik 62 Chinese Whisper (David Griffith) which has further Irish interest as the navigator is Offaly-born Adrienne Cahalan doing her 28th race to Hobart.

So who’s superstitious about sail number 13? The JV 62 Chinese Whisper (David Griffin) will have Shane Diviney aboard for the 75th race to Hobart

There’s continuing Irish interest through the super-maxi Comanche whose owner Jim Cooney proudly proclaims his Meath connections (Ballivor to be precise) while from an international point of view Comanche’s credentials are further reinforced by having “The Navigator’s Navigator”, Stan Honey of California, on board to call the shots.

“The Ballivor Boat” – Jim Cooney’s Super-Maxi Comanche making fast but wet progress. Her crew for the RSHR 2019 will include the legendary navigator and tactician Stan Honey of CaliforniaAustralian entrepreneur Jim Cooney takes great pride on his County Meath links.

As for Gordon Maguire, he is of course well immersed in finalizing RSHR preparations with Matt Allen’s turbo-powered TP 52 Ichi Ban. But on a visit back to Howth in the Autumn, he’d a brainstorming session with the HYC Breakthrough team, and while his every word of advice was pure gold, the most cheering thing they were told was that the hard men of Ichi Ban wouldn’t dream of keeping themselves at peak performance with anything as crude as freeze-dried food. Thus when HYC Breakthrough get their shore management set up, Gordon will see that they’re guided with the proper introductions to the secret source of Ichi Ban’s magic victuals.

This vital shore management side will be looked after by Ian and Judith Malcolm, the parents of Luke, who are taking time out from the countdown to the Fireball Worlds 2020 in Howth to ensure that the HYC Breakthrough squad are protected as far as possible from the inevitable hassle which a long-distance management operation like this inevitably involves.

Because as with any great endeavour, no matter how careful and detailed you are in your planning, events will inevitably conspire to knock things astray. In all those years in which the organising Cruising Yacht Club of Australia realized they were in the countdown to the 75th Rolex Sydney Hobart race, and in all the many months – running into well over a year – through which the increasingly determined HYC Breakthrough team were pulling all their threads together, who on earth would have thought that as the start time approached for the Races of Races, the city of Sydney - with its unrivalled natural harbour the perfect arena for the start of a classic sailing event – would find itself under increasing threat from raging bush fires?

The Maxi InfoTrack just visible in the Sydney smoke on Tuesday of this week, when the keenly-anticipated SOLAS Big Boat Challenge was blanked out and cancelled by the smoke from the bush fires.
Everyone is continuing with their plans, and when they staged a very special regatta last weekend for classics which had taken part in the Sydney-Hobart race before 1976, the wind obligingly was nor’easterly and the harbour was looking more like itself.

It was a wonderful occasion, for with every passing year Australia is becoming more of a world leader in the preservation of great classic boats. And when we realize that the attendance at last weekend’s event included such legends as Jim Hardy (87) and the immortal Gordon Ingate, full of beans at 93 and invigorated by being back on board the superbly-restored Caprice of Huon which he raced with such style during the 1960s, it gives us yet another excuse to use that classic Cowes Week photo from 1965.

It shows Caprice slicing through the crowded water accompanied by a launch filled with admiring RYS alickadoos, beating towards the finish line and an overall win in the Britannia Cup at a time when the boat was already 17 years old - and she’d been built in 1948 to a Robert Clark design which was basically pre-World War II in its origins.

Sydney sailing at its best in clear air – the classic Hobart race veteran Windrose on the second day of last weekend’s Pre-Hobart Classics Regatta in Sydney
Sailing as a sport for all ages – Sir James Hardy (left, aged 87) with Gordon Ingate (93) aboard the multiple winner Caprice of Huon, now a beautifully-restored classic.
One of sailing’s most abiding images. Gordon Ingate’s Caprice of Huon slices her way through Cowes Roads in August 1965, on her way to winning the Britannia Cup when she was already 17 years old. And as a matter of note, she too carries sail number 13…….
But then on Tuesday as the final countdown continued with the day allocated to the Grinders Coffee SOLAS Big Boat Challenge – traditionally a superb in-harbour spectacle involving legendary maxis – the wind has swung to the northwest, the smoke rolled over and the air became almost unbreathable while visibility was at times down to 0.1 nautical miles, so though an attempt was made at racing, it had to be abandoned.

It may seem utterly trivial to be concerned about smoke-impaired visibility for the start of the Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race on December 26th when so many people’s very existence and way of life and property is under the bush fire threat. But as the recent typhoon-plagued Rugby World Cup in Japan reminded us, life is going to go on regardless unless circumstances conspire the wipe out the entire human race, in which case no-one will be bothered either way.

So for those who find contemplation of the classic dash to Hobart a refreshing change from the suffocation of the Festive Season, the word is that the defending champion for the overall win is a Tasmanian boat, Philip Turner’s canting keel Reichel Pugh 65 Alive, while the line honours win is being defended – not for the first time – by the Oatley family’s frequently-altered Super Maxi Wild Oats XI skippered by Mark Richards.

The Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race start as it can be, when the air is clear. Photo: Rolex/Studio Borlenghi