Sydney to Hobart race 2019: Sven Runow opens up on 1998 tragedy
He raced - and survived - the fatal 1998 Sydney to Hobart. Others never returned, but Comanche’s Sven Runow has good reason to race south each year.
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“I don’t like cricket,” said Sven Runow, Sydney to Hobart veteran and Comanche bowman, of why he bangs and crashes his way south each Boxing Day while others watch the annual Test match in the comfort of a pub or lounge room.
The eastern suburbs sailor raced and survived the deadly 1998 Sydney to Hobart and still returns each year to contest the famous Australian ocean.
Others have never gone to sea again, too damaged by the violence of a vile and fatal storm which raged for 36 hours 21 years ago, decimating the fleet and triggering the biggest search and rescue mission in Australian peacetime.
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Six men lost their lives, five yachts sunk, seven were abandoned and more that 50 women and men were rescued. Only 41 of the 115 starters make it to the finish line on the Derwent River in Hobart.
“It was a horrible race, a horrible storm a horrible memory,” said Runow, a marine assessor from Clovelly.
A couple of people were in bunks in a near state of shock and trauma and almost couldn’t move
Runow said he has done harder races since but never again felt the same fear as when a Bass Strait bomb in the form of a deep depression exploded over the fleet the second day of the 1998 race.
“When the storm hit us at midday the second day we sailed through it. At one stage we saw 80 knots (nearly 150km/h) and the sea blew flat,” said Runow, who raced south that year on the Sydney yacht, Margaret Rintoul II.
“The noise in the rigging was horrendous. It was frightening. It was the first time at sea I feared for my life.
“The wind dropped maybe 10-15 knots we went through the eye of the storm but the seas were monstrous.
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“Down below, when I could, I was sleeping on the sails. A couple of people were in bunks in a near state of shock and trauma and almost couldn’t move.
“It was the scariest race but not the hardest. The hardest are the ones where you go into a 40 knot southerly for three days. They are unrelenting. Awful.”
For the 75th anniversary, Runow is racing south on Neutral Bay businessman Jim Cooney’s, multimillion-dollar supermaxi Comanche.
At 53, Runow is the oldest bowman and foredeck hand on a line honours contender but also one of the most winning sailors in the fleet, with seven line honours wins and three overall crowns on NSW yachts including Sovereign, Bumblebee V and Wild Oats X1
Despite his past experiences in 1998, time between Christmas and New Year is always allocated to doing the 628 nautical mile race to Tasmania.
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“I never want to have to go through that again, 1998. But it never stopped me sailing. It affected us all in different ways,’’ said Runow, who hopes to do the race next year with his son Axel, now 17.
“There is something special about the Sydney to Hobart, about challenging yourself.
“It’s a great leveller and reality check. You get barred from doing so much nowadays, there’s so much compliance.
“And there is nothing better that going out as a team and achieving something.”
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