Spinnaker loss a big setback but Stacey Jackson pays tribute to her Wild Oats X crew for getting so close

Round the world sailor Stacey Jackson has paid tribute to her amazing crew after they came within a whisker of pulling one off the biggest stings in ocean racing in recent times.

Round the world sailor Stacey Jackson isn’t pondering what might have been in the Sydney to Hobart after being beaten into second place for the overall honours by a boat she worked on and raced for years.

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She’s simply stunned that she and her crew came so close to pulling off one of the biggest stings in world ocean racing in recent times.

Jackson and her team of 12 professional women sailors from Australia and overseas finished second overall in the Sydney to Hobart to the 66-footer Tasmanian yacht Alive.

A giant A2 spinnaker crucial to the fortunes of Wild Oats X in the race tore the very first night at sea, slowing the 66-footer considerably and repeatedly in the race.

Skipper Stacey Jackson aboard Wild Oats X.

Job done: Stacey Jackson on the Hobart docks.

“When we broke the spinnaker we suffered because of it and then again on the second day when we would have used it,’’ said Jackson, who sailed alongside the likes of 23-race veteran Vanessa Dudley, World Sailor of the Year Carolijn Brouwer, single-handed legend Dee Caffari and multiple America’s Cup sailor Katie Pettibone.

Then we needed it one more time and that was when Alive passed us at Cape Raoul off the east coast of Tasmania. It would have made a big difference to us.’’

Jackson said she is proud her crew — who had such a short time together before starting the race — had come so close to being the first all-women’s team to win it in 74 years.

Wild Oats X crew members Dee Caffari, Stacey Jackson and Faraday Rosenberg.

“We had just 12 days of sailing together and they had five years,’’ she said.

“Imagine what we would be like with five years.’’

Jackson, whose team finished just 13 minutes behind Alive in the line honours battle in sixth place, hopes to be back on the start line with a top-line crew again next year for the 75th anniversary Sydney to Hobart race.

The last yacht — the Sydney 40-footer Chancellor — is expected to be safely moored at Constitution Dock in time for New Year’s Eve celebrations, almost three days after Wild Oats X1 claimed line hours in a time of one day 19 hours seven minutes and 21 seconds.

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