Massed start a nightmare for skippers

Press, 26 December 1985, Page 24

Massed start a nightmare for skippers

From NZPA staff correspondent, CHRIS PETERS, in Sydney A record 181 yachts, ranging from giant thoroughbreds to tiny week-enders, today set sail for Hobart, in one of the classics of international blue water racing.

The Sydney-Hobart, dogged by controversy in recent years, will be little more than a week-end jaunt for the likes of the legendary Windward Passage, and will make or break a week and a halfs nigged racing for the 35 boats fighting for the Southern Cross Cup. This forty-first 630-mile classic has already had its share of controversy and disappointment, even before the fleet begins its charge down Sydney Harbour, in what will be the biggest massed start of a yacht race anywhere in the world, a television spectacular, and a nightmare for the skippers. With the very real prospect of collisions, protests and drama, the New Zealanders have tried and failed to have the race started in at least two divisions, to allow the Southern Cross Cup boats, with so much at stake in this high-scoring race, to get away cleanly. The powers that be at the Cruising Yacht Club have refused, preferring to keep the spectacle of the world’s biggest massed start, and concerned that the huge spectator fleet, already a giant headache, will be too much to handle if the fleet hangs around. Among the 12 withdrawals is the Queensland pocket maxi, The Office,

which broke her mast in the last of the harbour maxi races, and could not fit a new one in time. When the leaders turn south outside Sydney Heads, they are expected to be heading into strengthening southerlies, and are sailing for a Hobart that has had one of its wettest Decembers on record, with storms lashing the Tasmanian capital. The conditions should be made to order for the two New Zealand teams in the Southern Cross Cup series, who are 198 and 282 points respectively behind the cup leader, Britain. The British boats are best running before or reaching across light winds, but if the weather holds to forecast, the New Zealanders should have it all their own way. The 1985 fleet will be sailing in the shadow of last year’s disastrous race, in which 106 of the 152 starters failed to complete the course as a vicious gale lashed the fleet, in some of the worst conditions the winning New Zealand skipper, Peter Blake had seen. Of the handful of boats that finished, Lion New Zealand — at the moment plunging through the Roaring Forties in the Whitbread Round The World Race — was triumphant, surviving

conditions Blake later said made sailing like repeatedly driving a truck out of a three storey window on to concrete below. When the fleet turns north again for the run across Storm Bay, and up the Derwent River to Hobart, crews will be reminded of the controversial finish of the 1983 race, when the maxis, Nirvana, from the United States, and Condor, from Bermuda, clashed.

Condor ran aground, and Nirvana was disqualified. They will pass the infamous Possum Point Parking Lot, where later in the same race, the New Zealand Southern Cross Cup hero, Pacific Sundance, was stranded in a wind hole, and had to watch as Challenge II passed her to take handicap laurels. For New Zealand yachties “The Hobart” has as much mystique as the Melbourne Cup has in horse racing. But of the 40 races sailed so far, the Kiwis have won only three on handicap, and taken line honours four times. .

By contrast, New South Wales has hogged the victories with 26, while Tasmania, like New Zeahas three, Britain and the United States have won it twice each, and the remaining four races have been shared among Hong

Kong, Victoria, West Australia and South Australia. The race was first sailed in 1945, when it was won by the New South Wales boat Rani, but New Zealand had to wait 21 years before Fidelis took line honours in 1966.

The mighty Buccaneer did it again for the Kiwis in 1970, then came the New Zealand round the world maxis — Ceramco New Zealand in 1980, and Lion New Zealand last year.

Ceramco was the last New Zealand boat to take handicap honours — the other two were Rainbow II in 1967, the year the legendary Pen Duick 111 of France took line honours, and Pathfinder in 1971, the year the United States flier, Kialoa, took the first of her three Hobarts.

The giant Windward Passage, recently brought from the United States, and one of the few boats to become a legend in its own racing lifetime, is expected to fight out the finish this time with the other maxis, Ragamuffin and Apollo.

The first boats are expected across the line on Monday.