Sydney-Hobart: Bar room murmurs go radio active with records on line

Veteran sailor Tony Cable was the first to notch 50 Hobart races. Picture: James Croucher

Like many other sportsmen, sailors are very jealous of their records and quick to take offence when they think someone else might be jiggling the figures.

Over the past few months, the bars of yacht clubs around Sydney Harbour have seen small groups of ageing sailors getting their heads together and muttering darkly about others whom they insist are falsely claiming to have done more Sydney-Hobart races than they are entitled to.

In some bars, prized corner positions are unofficially reserved for those who have challenged the 628-nautical-mile trip to Hobart at least 25 times. Blokes who have chalked up 50 races are treated like heroes.

The muttering started to grow when it was announced that two of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia’s senior members, former commodore David Kellett and life member Tony Cable, would be firing the starting cannon and the five-minute warning gun for this year’s race.

Cable was the first person to notch up 50 Hobart races and last year he was credited with another passage for travelling on the race’s radio relay vessel, JBW.

Kellett won the double of line honours and the handicap win in 1987 when he was sailing master on Bernard Lewis’s maxi yacht Sovereign and he later took line honours in Lewis’s maxi Vengeance.

Wild Oats XI sails up the Derwent on her way to a ninth line honours victory last year. Picture: Richard Jupe

In his long career he sailed to Hobart 26 times but, more recently, has been aboard the radio relay vessel for the past 19 years — giving him an official total of 45 races.

On Monday Kellett laughed off the idea that counting trips on the radio relay vessel was somehow cheating the system.

“It has been club policy for over 35 years,” he said.

“It started when the famous ABC announcer Bert Oliver, who went down on the radio relay vessel for years, died and we couldn’t find anyone else to handle the job.

“The club asked Bill Thompson, who had done 22 races and was keen to get to 25, if he would do the job. But Bill said ‘no, I want to continue racing’.

“So the club said if you go down on the radio relay vessel you can count it towards your 25. You are covering the same distance and you are helping the club and promoting the sport.

“That was probably 35 years ago. So we have just carried on ever since.”

With the start of the race now only three days away there are other records being keenly watched along the waterfront.

The Oatley family’s supermaxi Wild Oats XI has won line honours in the race a record nine times but this year, despite more major modifications, she is unlikely to be setting any records.

Wild Oats XI skipper Mark Richards celebrates as he crosses the finish line last year.

According to Mark Richards, the yacht’s skipper, there will be a southerly change exiting Bass Strait and moving up the NSW south coast as the fleet heads towards Hobart. But how strong it will be and from what precise direction remains unknown.

“At this stage it appears the race will be more like a game of chess than a hard slog south,” Richards said on Monday.

“It will be a very tricky, tactical challenge in relatively light winds for much of the way. The hardest part will be to select the best course for your transition through the approaching system.

“Today’s forecast indicates we will start in a light-to-moderate northeasterly, and then have a change out of the south during the first night. If you position your yacht in the right spot for that change, and your opposition doesn’t get it right, then you might gain 50 or 60 nautical miles over them. That’s the big challenge.”

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On current projections it will also be a slow race with the first yacht into Hobart likely to be some 12 hours outside the race record time of 1 day, 9 hours, 15 minutes and 24 seconds set by Jim Cooney’s supermaxi, Comanche, two years ago.

Richards said light weather would suit Wild Oats XI’s new configuration, which includes the removal of two retractable daggerboards forward of the mast, and the addition of a small retractable rudder in the same location.