Sydney to Hobart yacht race 2023: Lindsay May plots course to history, part of John Quinn rescue

It’s not his Sydney to Hobart wins veteran Lindsay May considers his greatest achievement ahead of his 50th race, it’s fishing a stranger with a sense of humour out of the sea in the pitch dark.

Lindsay May is racing the Sydney to Hobart for the 50th consecutive time.

He’s done more consecutive Sydney to Hobart yacht races than anyone and won more than most but it’s fishing a stranger out of Bass Strait in the dead of night that is veteran navigator Lindsay May’s most memorable moment.

The 76-year-old has sailed on the fastest and most hi-tech yachts in the race over his 49 consecutive races and some of the smallest and slowest, including the old timber beauty and overall winner Love & War.

But it is May’s remarkable, dramatic and weirdly humorous trip to Hobart on the Irish yacht Atara back in 1993 that remains his most extraordinary and greatest achievement in the world famous race.

“We didn’t win but we rescued John Quinn the second night, December 27, nosing into Bass Strait, after we had got hit by a big wave and lost our mast,” May said.

Quinn, washed off his yacht MEM - May reckons it was by the same wave which smashed Atara - had been lost at sea for more than five hours in Bass Strait before the miracle recovery.

Lindsay May on Antipodes. Picture: Salty Dingo/CYCA

Lindsay May is racing to Hobart for the 50th time.

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With a search and rescue mission ignited, race officials were in contact with the tanker Ampol Sarel with her crew turning on a giant search light to scan the black seaway.

Incredibly, it hit Quinn almost immediately, bouncing off the reflector tabs on his new sailing jacket.

The fleet were notified and with May navigating a course, the battered and bashed Atara went to his aid, minus their mast, delaminating in her hull shored up by bunk struts and taking on water.

John Quinn after his recovery.

Atara limping into Eden with John Quinn.

“We got the call from the tanker ‘we’ve got him, we’ve got him’. Then soon after ‘he’s passing down our port side’,” May said. “I realised they couldn’t pick him up,

“Peter Messenger said I’ve got a bearing on the tanker and we motored back at flag chat for 12 minutes.

“We cut the engine and within minutes there was this bloke in the water who yelled out ‘heh’.”

Then things got a little tricky.

The famous yacht Love & War in the 2006 Sydney to Hobart.

May and the Atara crew tried to pick up Quinn but their efforts were sent sideways by yet another crashing wave.

A young sailor doing his first Hobart, Tom Braidwood, went into the water to help Quinn and he was finally hauled onto the yacht and identified himself as the missing skipper.

“Our sailing master Bill Sykes then asked him, ‘while you were sliding down the side of our hull did you see damage?’,” May said.

“He replied, “when the ambulance arrives you don’t check out the conditions of the duco’. He still had his sense of humour.”

Lindsay May, centre in blue shirt, after winning the Sydney to Hobart overall.

May, racing south this year on Geoff Hill’s Santa Cruz 72 Antipodes, borrowed an old saying from the late, great ocean racer Lous Abrahams when asked if he will be back for a 51st in 2024.

“Lou used to say at my age I only deal in increments of six months and I only say yes in October so I only get grief for two months from the wife,” May said

But in May’s case his wife Tania is a major supporter of his sailing career and has already organised special celebrations for his 50th in Hobart.

Originally armed with just a sextant to navigate his way south, May now has at his fingertips grid files, current charts and all the latest weather information required on his computer in his little nav station.

This confined and cramped space is home, not so sweet home, for May.

Lindsay May will be the first sailor to do 50 Sydney to Hobart’s.

“It’s not for everyone, especially when it wild, keeping yourself in position and hangin on is difficult,’’ he said.

“I have been launched out of the nav station and landed flat on my back. You don’t bounce as well as you get older.,’’

May still remembers the horrific race of 1998 25 years ago.

He raced on George Snow’s Brindabella which finished second to US billionaire Larry Ellison’s Sayonara in the race which claimed the lives of six men and saw mass rescues off stricken yachts.

“We only got 60 knots, we were 130 miles further south than where the drama happened,’’ he said.

“I remember being in Customs House (a water front pub) with the Sayonara guys and the 11am news came on the TV.

“There was just complete silence as we realised the extent and how many people were missing.’’

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