Race for home after ocean classic Sydney-Hobart canned

Sydney-Hobart sailors embark on a race no one had wanted — to beat border closures and get home for Christmas.

Wild Oats’s Muir Watson, Drew Bagnall, Marc Skjellerup (obscured), Gordon Smith and Brett Eagle dockside in Sydney on Sunday. Picture: Jane Dempster

Sailors shared a melancholy beer at the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia on Sunday after the Sydney-Hobart was cancelled, before embarking on a race no one had wanted — to beat border closures and get home for Christmas.

Enchantress skipper and owner John Willoughby and crew members Geoff Tomlins and Darren Papalexion were trying to look on the bright side as they packed up the South Australia-based yacht and prepared for the journey home.

While Mr Tomlins was bound for Sydney airport to get on a flight to Brisbane before Queensland imposed mandatory quarantine for Sydneysiders, Mr Willoughby raced to get on one of the last flights to Adelaide before the border shut at midnight.

Mr Willoughby, who would have started his 8th race on Boxing Day, said though he was disappointed he understood why the race had to be called off.

“If for instance a boat was able to run the race within the COVID rules it would be nice to go to the finish and then come back without going on land, but if there was some kind of emergency, if they had to lift people to safety, it wouldn’t work,” he said.

He said the crew had braved a 2.5m seas and 30 knot winds on an eight-day “Adelaide to Sydney yacht race” to arrive at the race’s starting point only to discover it had been called off minutes after arriving on Saturday night.

“We had a long trip, it’s 1,050 nautical miles to get here,” he said.

“We just got here and they said bad luck we’ve called the race off two minutes after they pulled in.”

Mr Papalexion, who was going to head home to the Central Coast and keep an eye on Enchantress until she could be taken home again, said it was another knock in a year of setbacks.

The crew from the Sydney-based Wild Oats — the 1985 original yacht once owned by sailing legend Bob Oatley — wrestled with their own disappointment as they finished off some overdue maintenance and toasted the missed opportunity with a beer.

Wild Oats skipper and co-owners Brett Eagle and Gordon Smith and crew Marc Skjellerup, Muir Watson and Drew Bagnall wore custom made Wild Oats 2020 victory shirts.

“The disappointment was palpable this morning,” Mr Eagle said from on-board a docked Wild Oats. “It costs tens of thousands of dollars to get her race ready, we knew it was a risk but there’s a few dollars behind this.”

“Having it cancelled at the last minute you’ve already spent a lot of your budget getting here, it’s added to the frustration.”

Mr Smith said the decision was gutting after they had spent more than a year getting Wild Oats ready to race after a radical upgrade that saw the whole boat repainted to be race-ready.