Black Jack and Wild Oats poised to revive Sydney-Hobart rivalry

Two of Australia’s greatest maxi yachts have been back in action at Hamilton Island Race Week.

Peter Harburg on board Black Jack for the Audi Hamilton Island Race Week. Picture: Andrea Francolini.

One of the most legendary — and fierce — rivalries in Australian yachting history has been revived as two of Australia’s greatest maxi yachts ever built battle it out around the rocky islands and turquoise waters of the Whitsundays.

Wild Oats XI and Black Jack 100 — now owned by multi-millionaires Sandy Oatley and Peter Harburg respectively and racing this week at Hamilton Island Race Week — are almost identical high-speed cutting-edge racing yachts. Both 30m supermaxis were built in 2005, by the same Sydney boat builder McConaghys, from plans by the same US yacht ­designer, Reichel-Pugh.

Both cost more than $5 million when built, and featured the latest in revolutionary sailing technology such as canting keels that flipped from side to side, movable water ballast, lightweight carbon fibre everywhere, titanium rudders and, in the case of Black Jack, even a tungsten keel. Both were commissioned by passionate and highly-competitive wealthy yachties; Wild Oats by the late Bob Oatley who had sold his Rosemount wine company in 2001 to Southcorp for $1.5 billion and then bought Hamilton Island resort, and Black Jack — then christened and raced as the legendary Alfa Romeo yacht — by former racing car driver and prestige car importer, Neville “Croaky” Crichton.

In the ensuing 12 years, both boats have gone on to win virtually every major ocean and offshore yacht race on offer. Unbelievably both remain among the fastest maxi ocean-racing yachts in the world, proving just how technologically-advanced they were for their time when first built.

Wild Oats, regarded as the most successful ocean-racing yacht ever, has crossed the line first in a record eight Sydney to Hobart (S2H) races, won the prestigious Tattersall’s Cup twice on handicap as well, and still holds the record for the fastest time for the race. But Alfa Romeo — who was taken by Crichton to Europe in 2006 to race mainly in the Mediterranean and only returned briefly for her sole S2H win against Wild Oats in 2009 — has won every major offshore racing event in Europe and the US, including the UK Fastnet race and the US Transpacific race to Hawaii. She holds the world record for winning the most Rolex offshore races — some as Alfa Romeo and others under her moniker for the past seven years of Esimit Europa raced by Slovenia businessman Igor Simcic — before Harburg bought her back for more than $4 million in February and shipped her back to Australia.

“It’s pretty unbelievable that you can have two 100-foot boats built more than a decade ago and yet they are both such an amazing design and have both been ­maintained in such good condition by their owners, that they ­remain amongst the fastest ocean racers in the world today,” ­Harburg said yesterday.

“After last year’s [S2H] race, I said that if we wanted to win, we needed a 100-footer; but I didn’t want to go down the path of [US billionaire] Jim Clark and Comanche and spend $50m building something new that may or may not work.

“Then I heard Alfa — or Esimit as she was called — was for sale in Europe at the right price — I didn’t think twice.’’

Harburg, also a talented motor racing driver in his youth and a close friend of the late racing champion Jack Brabham, says the technology and speed of Black Jack remains and he has only had to ”tweak” a few “little aspects” of the boat to improve her performance.

So far, the outcome looks promising and the portent for a close Sydney-to-Hobart battle in late December between the two great rivals is tantalising.

Sue Neales was flown to Hamilton Island as a guest of Audi Hamilton Island Race Week