Why Sydney to Hobart’s Wendy Tuck, Carolijn Brouwer and Stacey Jackson are our best and bravest
Cyclonic force winds, dismastings, knockdowns, head injuries and moments of extremes courage and triumph, this trio have survived and thrived in some of the most perilous conditions at sea.
News
Don't miss out on the headlines from News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Stacey Jackson, Wendy Tuck and Carolijn Brouwer share friendships, a love of sailing, the sea, racing round the world and doing Sydney to Hobart yacht races.
This intrepid trio also share the experience of being involved in some of the most terrifying, frightening and downright crazy moments at sea.
But not for an instant have their hair-raising antics put them off sailing or stopped them doing what they love – being at sea challenging themselves and with good mates by their side.
All three have raced around the world as part of either the Volvo Ocean race or in Tuck’s case, as a wining Clipper Race skipper.
And it is in these races they have experienced the highs and the extreme lows of racing across some of the most inhospitable stretches of water in the world and encountered conditions unfathomable to most.
In Brouwer’s case her most terrifying experience came in the Southern Ocean in her first round the world race and one she considers herself lucky to survive.
A Dutch Olympian, multiple world champion and Australian coach at the Paris Olympics, Brouwer now lives on the NSW Central Coast with former Australian Olympic medallist turned coach Darren Bundock and their son Kyle, 14.
But in 2001/02 she was called into the all-women Amer Sports Too crew for a number of legs in the Volvo ocean race.
“ I did the southern ocean legs and I was very naive. I had no idea and I didn’t have a lot of experience, Brouwer said.
“I was trimming the main one day. We used to sit in front of the steering wheel back then and didn’t have the frames that are around them now.
“I remember we were sailing downwind, big sails up and we just hit a wave and stopped dead. The amount of water coming over the deck was incredible. We were submarining.
“When we came back up out of the water I felt my head and realised it was stuck inside the spokes of the steering wheel.
“In the moment I couldn’t figure out what it happened. My head was stuck and I was just thinking. whoever is on the helm, if they steer drastically one way, this could end up pretty bad for me.
‘The water receded and I managed to get my head free. Then I realised my beanie and my gloves and everything that had been on me had been literally stripped from my body by the force of the water. I could so easily have broken my neck.
“Later I realised you just can’t ever fight the sea.’’
Brouwer, who went on to become the first woman to win the eight-month, 45,00 nautical mile Volvo Ocean Race with DongFeng in 2017/18, said some of the most magical but also terrifying moments of her sailing career played out in the Southern Ocean before ice gates were introduced to stop sailors racing too far south.
“There were mountains of icebergs. We were standing at the front of the yacht trying to see growlers so we didn’t hit them. It was crazy back then, crazy, crazy, crazy.
“The icebergs will like buildings.’’
Brouwer is competing in the 79th Sydney to Hobart with Jackson aboard Oroton Drumfire, a large and luxurious racer.
But in another races south she has been on smaller boats and in one instance saw 52 knots in the Australian classic
“It was pretty hairy,’’ she said. “At one stage they needed a driver and I realised the boat had a tiller not a wheel.
“I didn’t have a lot experience with that. I remember I was wearing a harness and it wrapped around the winch and that is what stopped me being washed overboard.
“I had a big guy behind me would just shove me back whenever I went back too far.’’
“Probably 100 knots,” Tuck said when asked the strongest wind she has ever encountered at sea.
“But of course the wind instruments had blow off so we are not really sure.
“Your nostrils get so dry, my mouth was so dry, you wonder if you can get any air
“The spray in the air, water hitting your face, it’s like needles, very painful.’’
There is plenty Wendy Tuck can’t remember about her worst moments at sea but some things she will never forget.
Skippering a yacht in the 2017/2018 Clipper round the world race and in charge of the safety of her entire crew, she was went below to get some sleep after being on deck for 24 hours due to enormous seas in the leg from China to Seattle in the US.
“I was in my bunk and the first thing I remember is getting airborne – I didn’t have a bunk above me – and thinking this is going to hurt when I land,’’ said Tuck, readying for her 17th Sydney to Hobart in a little two-handed boat Gizmo she has borrowed for the race.
“It did. I though I had bitten my tongue off because of the pain in my head but I had been knocked unconscious and somehow I ended up in the navigational station in this thing like a giant toy box with my bum in it, my feet facing out and me still in my sleeping bag.
“It was insane.
“I think I hit my head on the cabin roof as the boat pitched forward. I must have hit the support for the deck or something.
“I managed to get out, wiped my face, saw blood and got a bandage.’’
This was just the start of an extraordinary emergency at sea, around 1000 nautical miles from help, in testing conditions with Tuck concussed, battered and with a fractured rib and an injured fellow crewmate on the 70-footer Clipper boat Sanya Serenity Coast.
The yacht had ben knocked down – over on it side. Tuck believes it probably pitch poled and then laid over.
Up on deck after getting herself sorted, she surveyed damage and a crewmate who also had a head injury.
“I jumped on the helm and realised I could only turn the boat one way because of rudder damage and broken tiller arm,’’ Tuck said.
“The helm cage in front and behind the wheel, she slid behind it when hit by a wave and it collapsed on her.
“But she was on top of where I needed to go to fix things. She was half on top of the hatch we needed to access to check the steering.
“The boys rigged up a pulley system to get the three pieces of structure off her. Then we were able to get to it all and see what had happened.’’
Long story short, Tuck and her team were able to install an emergency tiller to hold the rudder straight.
“We could steer the boat straight that way,’’ Tuck said.
“We had to motor sail for over a week. We were nowhere near anything in the North Pacific Ocean.
“We made it (to Seattle) with 40 litres left in our tank. Incredible.’’
Jackson, who lead an all female crew in Wild Oats X to second place overall in the Sydney to Hobart in 2019. is also on Oroton Drumfire for the Hobart race.
Jackson has been involved in major dramas and been battered by cyclonic force winds at sea but her toughest moment was hearing a good mate had lost his life at sea in the same race as she was doing on a different boat.
Australian John Fisher, known to all simply as Fish and a popular and well known member of the international sailing community, was lost overboard in gale force conditions some 1400 miles west of Cape Horne off the yacht Scallywag in the 2017–18 edition of the Volvo race.
Smaller than other crew members, Jackson said she was often left exhausted simply by trying to hold on in the same race.
“We were getting washed around a lot on the deck, I’m a lot lighter than some of the other crew so it meant that I would put a lot more energy into holding on,’’ she said.
“But then once we heard the news that we lost Fish, you know a friend and a competitor, that will to hold on was never greater.’’
That same leg Jackson‘s yacht ended up being dismasted after rounding Cape Horn.
A rain squall came through and a rain cloud came over and visibility went to zero,’’ Jackson said.
“It was in that rain cloud we got dismasted, our mask broken fell down.’’
Despite plenty more memorable moments, has made a career in professional sailing.
“It’s a water sport, so along with that comes the risks.
“There’s definitely moments when I thought, well if anything goes wrong here, this could be a seriously bad outcome.
“But I don’t go out there fearing for my life that’s for sure and probably the day when I do that I’ll probably stop doing it.
“Then the day I stop worrying about the risks I’ll stop doing it as well.
“I think the reason I absolutely love the Sydney to Hobart race in particular is that you talk to a person who’s not a sailor but they always know the Sydney to Hobart.
“That means you can relate to someone who’s got no idea about sailing because of this race.
“For me it’s also this huge sense of it being something I grew up dreaming about doing and getting to achieve it is special. It’s always special.”
Jackson said she believes the support of women in sailing could be better but that “it’s definitely coming along.
On Drumfire there are a number of women in crucial roles, including Brouwer as a watch captain and driver and Jackson as crew boss.
More from AMANDA LULHAM HERE
More Coverage
Originally published as Why Sydney to Hobart’s Wendy Tuck, Carolijn Brouwer and Stacey Jackson are our best and bravest
Beauty and the Beast! Sydney to Hobart yacht race odd couple
One is a pugnacious and hi tech racing machine built to maul and destroy records. The other an old beauty who “hugs” her crew. These opposites are part of the magic of the Sydney to Hobart.
‘So excited’: Sydney Hobart sailor a real chip off the old block
For almost every one of her 21 years Georgia Wharington has watched her dad set sail in the Sydney to Hobart. Now she will be beside him for one of the fastest and most furious in recent times.