Wings Cruising Log

Sydney To Hobart Race:
Take a light wind flyer on a 632 mile heavy air upwind race? Well it wasn't our choice of weather conditions, but you take what you get, and we took it most all the way to Hobart, winds in the high 20's to mid 30's with steep waves, a Tasmanian Twister, plus smoke on the water, and a big hole at the end.

So how did we do? Darn good if you ask me. Yeah, I'd like to have won the race, and for a while we thought we might, on corrected time, but in the end we got 2nd in class and 4th overall IRC. We were also the 12th boat to finish, behind the 6 Volvo boats that made it, (two retired with damage), 4 maxi's, and one very well sailed 62' Bumblebee 5. We didn't get much media coverage, but the cheers were big when we got to Hobart, and we felt pretty good about it. Congratulations to owners Dick and Bonnie Robbins and to Jim and Robin Roser for organizing the program, and to all my fellow sailors on board Icon. You done well.

The race had a little of everything, a challenging start, some light air beating, and two days of bashing southward with three reefs and a #5 jib. It was that windward work which made us ask ourselves, "Why are we doing this?". Launching off of six meter waves and dropping on the next one was not fun. The impacts were brutal. But I have to say, the sounds coming from the boat were reassuring. Yes it was loud. BOOM! Over and over from Wednesday to Friday we crashed and crashed, and the boat shuddered and shook like jelly, but it always seemed solid, there was never any breaking sound, just a very solid sounding hull bouncing off some pretty big waves, shaking itself free of a lot of water, and charging off towards the next one. The helmsmen tried to steer through the waves, but the length of the boat and the length between the waves was wrong, that method didn't work. So we just toughed it out.

The boat held together very well. Other than some chafed reefing lines the only complete failure I know of was my cell phone. After winding up in the bilge, submerged under a few gallons of salt water, it just didn't work very good any more. Otherwise we didn't break anything. The wind strengths were up and down, mostly up, and we had a lot of sail changes and reefing going on. Except the bowman who was submerged a lot of the time, the work kept us warm. In the end, we used most of our sails.

Because we were going to windward, without the water ballast that most of our competitors ahead were carrying, and without the benefit our our new keel bulb, unable to be fitted in time for the race and still sitting on the pier back in Sydney, crew weight on the rail was critical. Everyone sat there as much of the time as possible. Even the few people off watch were arranged so that the heaviest person slept (if such a thing was possible) in the bunk farthest outboard. Even the navigator crawled out on deck whenever duties below allowed. It was wet and cold, so we all had all of our clothing layers on and our foulies buttoned up tight.

The lightest person aboard was Robin, who, among other duties, was cooking full time. We had hot food the whole race and no one complained about her being below. Her job was not easy either. The rolling and pitching boat was more than the gimballed stove could handle and pots had to be held in place. I won't soon forget the image of Robin, belted into the galley, on her tip toes to reach the back of the stove which, due to the heel of the boat, was far over her head, holding a pot of stew onto the stove with her fingertips. The food was good too, but many of us couldn't keep it down. Seasickness was a serious problem for many boats, Icon included. One yacht retired because of serious concerns at the intensity of the mal de mer aboard, but on Icon the sick people mainly kept to their stations and we carried on.

Navigation was easy; come out of Sydney heads, go close hauled, and try to hold our course to Hobart. Starboard tack sheeted tight. I spent a lot of time on the radio logging the positions of other boats and receiving weather faxes and satellite pictures looking for an alternate strategy but there just wasn't much choice about where to go. One worry was that the leaders had all stayed high of the rhumb line, and were going to get into the Tasmanian coast sooner than we were. It hadn't been our plan to go in, but we worried about the separation. Friday the wind finally began to swing around and we had some choices about which path to follow. By plotting the postions of the other boats and tracking their gains or losses, we made some judgements about the best course. In the end we stuck with our plan and stayed out from the coast until the entrance to Storm Bay. By mid morning on Saturday our strategy seemed to be working. We took big bites out of the lead held by the boats ahead, even cutting over 30 miles out of Brindabella and Nicorette and the Volvo boats during one six hour period. Only Bumblebee and Lodka Bols seemed to be holding on to their distance ahead. We knew we had a chance to win.

Storm Bay took that chance away, with light and shifty patches of air, when there was any wind. We slowed to a crawl, and finally made it into the Derwent River and to Hobart after three days and three and a half hours from Sydney.

We beat Nicorette and Line7. Grundig and Skandia (Wild Thing) were out, but the Polish 79 footer Lodka Bols had us, and we were worried about the smaller boats behind who were going to take advantage of the predicted NW winds and run on in before the time ran out. In the end we got 2nd in division and 4th in class. Not bad. Bumblebee, not in our class, won the race overall. Nice job.

Tasmanian Twister:
One afternoon, I don't even remember which afternoon, one of the crew pointed out a waterspout visable a few miles ahead. It was right on our bow and moving to the NE, not headed our direction, so we just viewed it with interest, not any alarm, a long ropey thing writhing like a charmed snake. I wanted to get a shot of it but my camera was buried below and they needed my weight on the rail. The twister disappeared behind the jib. A few moments later it reappeared to leeward, much closer and much bigger. I decided I had to photograph this amazing sight and I jumped below and grabbed my Nikon. We heard Nicorette radio the fleet that they were hit by it. Talking to them later, I learned that they had tried to sail around it but the wind died as it got near, and they couldn't sail. Then they quickly dropped the sails and just before it hit they all went below and closed the hatch. The twister's strong winds knocked them flat with bare poles and the unsecured mainsail worked its way partially up the mast, flogging itself and everything else on deck. After the storm passed they found they had a severly damaged main, which they were able to change and continue on with little loss of distance. Skandia (Wild thing) was damaged and retired, and we heard Grundig give a radio "Pan Pan". They had launced off of a big wave and when they landed the impact crushed a major portion of their hull. There was panic in the voice on the radio as they worried about an immediate sinking, but the crew quickly got a temporary repair made and they headed back to port. A total of 18 boats retired, not too many for a Hobart race.

Smoke on the Water.
During our race to Hobart the bush around Sydney and New South Wales was furiously burning. As we sailed south along the coast we went into and out of smoke plumes, some extended several miles out to sea, and ash dropped on our deck. The smoke burned our eyes and we were glad to get past it. Flying back to Sydney 10 days later the fires are still burning and it had become quite a disaster. The city is not threatened, except by smog. The blue sky had a haze that remindes me of Los Angeles.

Hobart:
Icon sailed across the finish line in Hobart with our huge yellow A2 spinnaker at 16:40 Saturday, to a warm welcome on a warm afternoon. Everett, our shore crew for this race, met us with cases of beer and a box of Tassie scallop pies. Hugs and kisses from our wives and friends and then we dug into the beer and pies. Sydney to Hobart. We made it.

Taste of Tasmania:
Judy and I had a couple of days in Hobart, working on the boat and enjoying the big party, including the great night wine tasting and sampling gourmet food at the "Taste of Tasmania" near Constitution Dock, then we rented a car and headed out on a mad dash around the state. We spent a lot of time in the forests of the West Coast, saw wildlife including a Tasmanian Devil, a Wombat, and several Wallabies and Kangaroos, to say nothing of a bunch of rain and lots of curving roads. New Years Eve was spent in a ghost town where we and one other couple were the only guests in the nearly abandoned hotel. One Tassie citizen, when he heard of our destination, said, "It'll be quiet." It was. While rough and tumble Hobart had fights and near riots, we retired to our room in the mountains with a bottle of champagne and missed the stoke of midnight by a couple of hours. Three days later we were back in Hobart, and a day after that we are back in Sydney and back to work. Quite a week or two, I'd say.

Would I do it again? We'll see, but not unless it was a program and a boat as good as Icon, and that isn't likely.

Fred & Judy