TasWeekend: Ocean racers setting sail for home
There are many reasons why the Sydney to Hobart is so valued by its captains and crew. And for these three skippers, there is an extra bonus.
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IT is easy to get caught up in the high-stakes glamour of the huge super-maxis competing for line honours glory in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race — especially this year on the 75th anniversary.
Each year there is so much media attention focused on these ocean-racing thoroughbreds, with their multimillion-dollar price tags and high-profile owners, and the inevitable bank-breaking damage some will sustain to their space-age masts and rigging as they tear across open water in the quest to break the record for the 628-nautical mile course. But, as any yachtie worth his salt will tell you, the real race happens further back in the fleet.
First across the line might score the bulk of the media frenzy — and public attention peters out fairly quickly after the big boats are tied up in Constitution Dock — but the line honours winner is rarely the overall winner.
The overall winner of the race is decided by a handicap system, taking each boat’s size and expected time into account, and adjusting its final time accordingly. This means the overall winner is frequently a much smaller boat than the one that crosses the line first. And, for what it’s worth, the overall winner gets a much more impressive trophy than the line honours winner. The overall win is certainly what most of the competitors are striving for and, among seasoned sailors, the most highly respected.
And for this year’s landmark race, every sailor wants their name written in the history books, after setting off from Sydney Harbour on Boxing Day to reach Hobart one to six days later.
“True yachties and veterans of the race don’t frown upon the first boat home, but we understand it’s the sideshow at the circus in a way,” says veteran of 37 Sydney to Hobart races, Ed Psaltis, 58, from Kingston.
“The real race is against your handicap. There is so much focus on the superstar maxis, and really it’s a case of the biggest boat gets home first.
“It’s just a race between the five or so biggest boats and the biggest chequebook wins. But the true winner has always been the overall winner, and to win on handicap you’re not just racing against one or two other boats, you’re racing against all 150 of them.”
This year will be Psaltis’s 38th Sydney to Hobart, having done his first in 1979 and his first three with father, Bill, himself a veteran of 22 Sydney to Hobarts.
“Dad is 92 now and he still races on Sydney Harbour once a week,” Psaltis says. “He was the trailblazer in our family. I don’t know how he got started in sailing but we have all followed him into it.
“There has been at least one Psaltis in every Sydney to Hobart since 1961, and this year there will be three of us: me, then my brother Arthur on Occasional Coarse Language and my son Ben on Gweilo, which is one of the top boats to watch this year. So dad will be very proud.”
This year will also mark the first time Psaltis will be racing towards home instead of away from it.
Having spent his whole life in Sydney, the chartered accountant moved south in March this year, finally deciding to make Hobart his home after decades of visiting at the end of each Sydney to Hobart.
“I always wanted to come here,” he says. “I loved it every time I sailed into Constitution Dock and always wondered why I didn’t just move here. This year I had business opportunities in the chartered accounting firm I was a part of, so I finally had the chance to give it a go. It’s been fantastic so far, I love it.
“All my Sydney mates were saying ‘you will be cold in winter,’ but it was lovely, I had a nice cosy fire in the lounge room, I was perfectly content.”
The first Sydney to Hobart yacht race was held in 1945 and comprised just nine starters, with the winner being John Illingworth’s yacht Rani, in a time of six days, 14 hours and 22 minutes. The race has, obviously, grown significantly since then, often being referred to as the Everest of ocean racing — the race that every offshore sailor wants to conquer at least once.
Crossing times have also shortened enormously, with the current record, set by Comanche in 2017, currently standing at one day, nine hours, 15 minutes and 24 seconds. And this year’s fleet comprises 163 yachts from Australia and around the world.
Psaltis was 29 years old when he sailed his first Sydney to Hobart, skippering his own boat, a 30-footer named Nuzulu.
“It was an extremely little boat with a light displacement. Just myself and six of my mates, all as crazy as me, doing the race on this tiny boat,’’ he says.“When we got to Hobart we were so proud of the fact that we’d made it. We were just kids, but now with very fond memories. We got a pasting in Bass Strait that year but we kept plugging away, and I’m hugely proud of crossing that line as the owner/skipper. We got a podium result.”
And he just keeps coming back, these days on the 36-foot Midnight Rambler, with a crew of eight. He jokes that each of his last three races has been his “last one”, but something keeps compelling him to do “just one more’’.
Psaltis says his mobility is not as good as it once was, all just part of getting older, which is why he has been thinking about leaving the notoriously gruelling Sydney to Hobart behind in recent years. But, as it turns out, a new boat fixed that.
“I thought I’d had enough, I’m getting older, I’m not as fit and flexible, I have a bad knee and hip, and if I’m going to do it, I would rather do it properly,’’ he says.
“But I have a new Midnight Rambler now. It’s still a racing boat, but it has more comforts. So I found a way to keep going on a boat that is still competitive but more user friendly.”
That’s right, a new Midnight Rambler. Of the eight boats Psaltis has owned in his life, the last six have been named Midnight Rambler. “Yeah, I’m a Rolling Stones fan,” he laughs. “My kids have all had it drummed into them, too, they know it’s a classic song. My previous boat was a fast racing machine, but this one has just as much chance to win on handicap.”
And in all his years of racing, Psaltis has taken the coveted trophy for overall winner just once. That was in 1998, the catastrophic storm-lashed race in which six sailors lost their lives and many boats were badly damaged.
Psaltis and his crew made it to Hobart unscathed and beat their handicap in the process, but the devastating toll of that year’s race has always stayed with him.
“One of the blokes who died was a close family friend of me and my father,’’ he says. “What scared me then was knowing that if he can be taken out, anyone can. But we got through on a 35-footer, against amazing odds, we got there. What happened out there that year was absolutely horrible, but I am so proud of what my team did to get us through. Only they know what it was like and what we went through.
“It does stay with you, it’s part of why I still get nervous every year. I always respected the sea before that race, but since 1998, that only increased it. That race reinforced to me that you must have a crew of not just mates but people who can work seamlessly together. The champion team will always be a team of champions.”
Laura Roper, 30, from Sandford, is returning for her second Sydney to Hobart this year, once again skippering the family boat Natelle Two. When she raced her first Sydney to Hobart in 2011, she was just 22, making her the youngest woman to skipper a Tasmanian boat in the race’s history. She finished 59th overall, a respectable debut effort in anyone’s book.
A keen and accomplished sailor, Roper says she was bitterly disappointed when she missed out on joining her dad, Glenn, and brother, Ashley, in the 1994 race.
“I was supposed to go but they changed the minimum age to 18, and suddenly I was too young so I couldn’t go,’’ she says. “Since then I’d tried to join another crew to do the race but I had trouble getting a ride. So I thought bugger it, if the only way to go is to skipper my own boat, I’ll do it myself.
“I said to dad ‘I’m taking Natelle.’ I didn’t ask. I told him! So my dad and my brother both came along with me. I was happy. It’s an old boat and conditions weren’t ideal for us that year, but we didn’t come dead last!”
Launched in 1975, Natelle Two has completed 14 Sydney To Hobarts, and three of those have been with the Ropers, so Laura knows the boat is seasoned and sturdy enough for the job. “She’s built for it. I know that she can handle 40 knot winds and keeps ploughing though. She doesn’t break, just keeps going. She’s not made of stuff that will break at the drop of a hat.”
Roper, a registered nurse, says it was her dad’s idea to take part in the race again this year — he competed in the 50th anniversary race and wanted to be part of the 75th. While she will once again skipper Natelle Two with her Dad and brother among the crew, Roper says helming is not her preference.
“I’m not overly competitive,” she laughs. “I’m just usually happy to go and muck about on the water. I’d prefer to be on the foredeck, really. But I’ve been helming for a while now in the lead-up to try and get back into the groove of things, and while it’s challenging, I have the support of the whole crew.
“Dad really wanted all of us to go together this year. He is 71 now and sees this year as most likely his last opportunity to go. Unfortunately, my brother Cameron broke his leg a few weeks ago and can’t come any more, which is sad, but I’ll have Dad and Ash with me.”
Just like Psaltis, Roper will be sailing towards her home port and, apart from the home-ground advantage of knowing the Derwent intimately, being a Tasmanian competitor comes with a few other perks.
“It might be a race but we’re also coming home, so one way or another we’ve got to get here anyway,” she says. “Quite often you see other boats sustain some kind of minor damage halfway and they choose to turn around. But if we ripped a sail or something, it would be cheaper and easier for us to do our best job of repairing it and just limp home, so we will still finish.
“Coming in to Hobart to a home crowd is absolutely thrilling, too. Your friends and family make the effort to be there when you come in, and as you sail past the Taste on the waterfront they always announce there’s a Tasmanian boat coming in and everyone cheers for you, it’s amazing.”
Qantas pilot Michael Crew, 52, from Howrah, is preparing to race in his fourth Sydney to Hobart this year on his 62-footer Magic Miles.
He skippered the boat to 13th place overall in his first race in 2013, followed by 17th overall in 2014, and 15th in 2017. This year he is hoping to improve on his time again and finish a little higher up the order.
“We’ve had good results in previous years,” he says. “For me it’s all about bettering our time. I don’t think we’re ever going to win it on handicap, but it’s a challenge to try.
“We have a few new crew this year, including my father. He’s 78 and this will be his first Sydney to Hobart. He’s not a yachtie but he is a boatie, so he’s very capable.”
Magic Miles is a charter boat on the Derwent when she’s not racing, and Crew says he will probably retire her to full-time cruising duties following this year’s race.
“This is most probably the last race we will put this boat through. The crew are itching to be on a more competitive handicap boat to try and get a podium finish, so I reckon I’ll be searching for a new boat down the track. But I won't get rid of Magic Miles.”
While clearly driven by a competitive spirit, chasing that elusive overall win, Crew is also noticeably focused on simply finishing the race above all else. Regardless of his final result, his priority is simply reaching Hobart safe and sound.
“I guess 29 years of being a pilot does that to you. When you’re captain of the ship, you’re responsible to ensure everyone’s safety,” he says. “I want to get a good time, but more than that I want to get everyone home safely.
“In the 2013 race there was a big storm in Bass Strait, lots of boats retired, so for us to get through that unscathed was a bit unique. Safety is always in the back of your mind when crossing Bass Strait.
“We also did the Three Peaks Race that same year, and we got smashed by the weather then. But the boat is built for it. She’s 34 tonnes, so she’s big, heavy and slow, but she handles those conditions well.”
Crew says there are a number of things that keep calling him back to do the race again: the drive to improve his time, the sense of achievement from simply reaching Hobart, the electric thrill of the start on Sydney Harbour, and the warm welcome at home.
But it is the sheer level of comradeship on board that he values most.
“In 2017 we had this really eclectic group of guys on board, old and young, and it became a bit of a men’s shed,” he says. “The guys opened up about all sorts of things, personal hardships, mental health.
“And I mean, we had multi-millionaires through to blokes living in caravan parks in the crew that year, but they all opened up and bonded. So it was a very cathartic experience for a lot of them who went on to complete this physically demanding challenge.”
For Roper, the Sydney to Hobart is a whole family affair, on the family boat that everyone in the family sees as their own.
“It is a nice thing to be able to do. There’s not many sports in the world where you get the opportunity — my brother and I in our 30s, Dad in his 70s — to all compete together on the same playing field like this.
“My parents bought the boat when I was one. I’ve been around boats my whole life. Even if he wasn’t racing, Dad would always be on the wharf, so this was just a natural progression for me, really.
“And part of my upbringing was that I can do anything the boys can do. So when the opportunity came up to do this myself, I jumped at it. Now I can tick it off, done that.”
For Psaltis, competing in the Sydney to Hobart has been almost a compulsion year after year, but the main thing he has always looked forward to is the warm reception in Hobart, now his home town.
“The Hobart welcome and community is always incredible. Coming in as a visitor all those years, it was always such a fantastic welcoming scene and so much fun, and this year I’m home when I get there.
“But there’s also the camaraderie — teammates who will go to our graves as very close mates, and that only happened from being at sea during some tough scrapes. You form some close friendships.
“And also everything that happens on that voyage is larger than life. It’s so raw and wild and it gets you away from all the mundane issues of your everyday life.
“When you’re going around Tasman Island in a 35 knot southerly, all your problems on land don’t seem so big after all. In a way it breaks you out of that cosy cocoon of life, and that’s pretty special.”
Laura Roper is supporting the anti-human trafficking charity A21 during this year’s race. Natelle Two bears the A21 logo as part of raising awareness of human trafficking and sex slavery around the world and here in Australia. You can donate to the cause at: www.a21.org/fundraising/laura-roper/sydney-to-hobart-for-a21
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