Being Australia, the betting is lively on the 80th Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race. But if you’d gone along with the weather forecasts of a week ago, indicating a light airs race, you’d be badly out of pocket, as the fleet has been slugging into rugged southerlies, with extra-steep boat-breaking waves exacerbated by the south-going East Australian Current.
QUARTER OF A MILLION ON SYDNEY HEADS LEADER
On the other hand, the word all over downtown Sydney would have it that someone staked Aus$250,000 on Christian Beck’s hundred-footer LawConnect to be first out of the magnificent Harbour past Sydney Heads. Our header photo indicates that said someone – if they exist – is very much in the money, albeit by just half a boat’s length on Master Lock Comanche, and even if we have to live with the fact that an exchange of Aus$250,000 shrinks into €142,400.
The smooth water at the in-harbour start in wintry conditions was very different from the wind-over-current conditions out in the Tasman Sea. Photo: RSHR
Furthermore, much and all as everyone loves a winner, we have to remember that there’s a certain Irish proprietorial pride in the progress of the Hong Kong-owned 100ft Scallywag, as Grattan Roberts of Crosshaven and Frank O’Leary – ancestrally of Kinsale – are in her crew.
THE GREAT IRISH CORRAL
We also enclose Bryon Ehrhart’s JK-designed 88ft Lucky of the New York YC in the greater Irish corral, because as George David’s Rambler 88 she set a Round Ireland Monohull Record so impressive in the 2016 Round Ireland Race from Wicklow that she won overall as well on any handicap system you care to name.
The question with Lucky is how well she can keep up with the hundred footers across the total spectrum of conditions. As we write, the word from the front line seems to be okay, for although LawConnect was initially leading in crap speed conditions which had her at only 12.8 knots despite being on the inshore track, she was theoretically 2.2 miles ahead of Master Lock Comanche on 12.5 knots.
SEEKING STRONGER CURRENT
MLC has been in the offshore lane, seeking a stronger favourable current, and is just half a mile ahead of the similarly-tracking Lucky which is also on 12.5 knots, so that’s okay. But Scallywag, also offshore, is 3.4 miles off the lead.
Palm Beach XI is the former Wild Oats XI, and still under Mark Richards’ command Photo:Best4boats
Meanwhile, Mark Richards skippering the former Wild Oats XI—now named Palm Beach XI and sponsored by luxury powerboat builders—was tracking inshore and registering only 12.1 knots, but well placed at only 1.7 miles behind LawConnect.
PUTTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
Leaving them to slug southwards for the moment, we’ve to put the record straight on some points of history. We’ve referred to the current fleet as being “record”. That’s only in context of the Sydney-Hobart Race divide, which came in 1998 when nine lives were lost in ferocious conditions as the fleet battered its way across the Bass Strait.
Until then, there’d been a more relaxed attitude to standards, and in the 50th Sydney-Hobart Race in 1994, an astonishing and very international fleet of 371 boats started. But even in relatively undemanding conditions, there were still 63 retirals, while of the 309 finishers, the winner was the Whitbread Race Farr-designed ketch Tasmania, ex-New Zealand.
The former Whitbread Race ketch New Zealand was overall winner – as Tasmania - ahead of the record fleet in 1994.
1998’s CARNAGE
Numbers were well down for the “ordinary” race of 1995 and subsequent stagings, yet even so in 1998’s carnage, 115 started but only 44 finished. But the extremely strict safety regulations which were introduced thereafter (including the much-disputed 18 years minimum age for participants) has often kept numbers below or around a hundred until recently, so a fleet of 129 for the current race is regarded as a current record, a “best” for the 21st Century.
But it’s a best which is being depleted at a ferocious pace. Because—far from the gentle pace which was being forecast a week to ten days ago—it has become something of a battlefield out there, with the all-powerful Master Lock Comanche benefitting most from the severe conditions to start to show ahead of LawConnect.
The Sydney-Hobart course – changing conditions from Tasman Island westward, becoming even more flukey in the Derwent River towards Hobart, can play havoc with hard-earned places.
Either way, it looks as though the course record will not be bothered, for although the weather is expected to improve as the weekend makes on, the lighter winds this will bring look like being flukey in the extreme. Frustrating for the participants, but fascinating for observers, who know that in any case, the final 50-plus miles in to the finish off Hobart in the Derwent River can serve up more than enough flukiness of wind.
But in the first 24 hours, the thought of a calm River Derwent seemed very far away as the Australian winter made a brief return.
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