Flight south

We look at the form for the Rolex Sydney Hobart

As usual the Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race will set sail on Boxing Day (Monday) for the 628 mile jaunt south, past the eastern entrance to Bass Straight, separating Tasmania from mainland Australia, and down to Hobart on the southeastern side of Tassie.

After some slightly rearranging this week, the fleet will comprise 86 boats, following the withdrawal of the Kaiko 56 Merlin of Olympic gold medallist sailor David Forbes and Richards Brooks, replaced by the last minute entry of Sean Langman's converted Open 60/66ft skiff that the Noakes Boatyard owner has campaigned for the last nine years, but has this year chartered out to Phil Turner who will race her with a mixture of crew from Sydney and Tasmania under the name Coogans Stores. Langman himself has chartered the former Nicorette, Ludde Ingvall's 2004 Rolex Sydney Hobart line honours winner. Nicorette was dismasted soon after the last Hobart race, and Langman has rerigged her.

The 86 strong fleet is down on the bumper crop of 117 that competed in last year's 60th anniversary event, but up on the mere 56 boats that competed in 2003. These are well off the 200+ boat fleets the race regularly used to attract during the 1990s (for the 50th anniversary event in 1994 for example there were 271 entries). The downturn in numbers most attribute to the more stringent safety requirements (and thus increased cost) placed on competitors following the extreme conditions of the 1998 Hobart race when six crew were lost including British Olympic sailor Glyn Charles and 71 of the 115 starters retired. Another reason is the increased number of alternatives to the Sydney-Hobart such as the Melbourne-Hobart race (although this only has 12 entries this year) and the Pittwater and Coffs Harbour Offshore Series.

Despite the downturn in numbers, there is no less quality in the Rolex Sydney-Hobart fleet and this year there will be a particularly exciting battle for line honours. For the 2005 race the rules for the fastest boats have changed. In recent years maxis such as the first Alfa Romeo, Skandia and Konica Minolta (or Zana as she was known) were allowed a maximum rating under IRC of 1.61, now they are simply limited to 30m in overall length, rating be damned, unless of course owners wish to try for the double-whammy of winning handicap honours too (a very real prospect this year).

There seems little doubt that unless there is a rerun of last year's event, when the two line honours favourites Skandia and Konica Minolta broke in dramatic fashion, the former losing her keel and capsizing, the latter breaking her deck, the two brand new Reichel-Pugh maxis Neville Crichton's Alfa Romeo and Bob Oatley's Wild Oat XI are favourites for line honours. At the moment one bookmaker has Wild Oats XI as race favourite at 2.35:1 ahead of Alfa Romeo on 2.50:1. Wild Oats XI is certainly the newer boat, not just in terms of her launch but also her design but both boats are still very very new and as a result both susceptible to teething problems.

Alfa Romeo has an impressive crew of rock stars including Ben Ainslie, Adrian Stead, Michael Coxon, Grant Simmer and Joey Allen, while Murray Spence and Ian Moore are navigating, while the Oats crew includes sailing master Mark Richards, newly appointed navigator Adrienne Cahalan (followed her departure from Brazil One), Ian Murray, Alby Pratt, the Merrington brothers, and Robbie Naismith.

Given the forecast both Alfa Romeo and Wild Oats XI should be capable of breaking the record of 1 days 19 hours 48 minutes and 2 seconds, set by Morten Lorenzen's Nokia VO60 in the 1999 race. Last year Nicorette's elapsed time was 2 days 16 hours, 44 seconds, slower than the 2 days 15 hours 14 minutes Skandia managed in 2003 and the 2 days 4 hours 58 minutes Neville Crichton managed on the first Alfa Romeo in 2002. Time to reverse this trend.. .

The fight for third place unfortunately doesn't look to be much of a rerun of the 2003 event when the Skandia maxi of Grant Wharington narrowly beat Stewart Thwaites' Konica Minolta to line honours. Since Skandia was nearly destroyed in the last race, Wharro has modified the boat greatly and she is considerably faster - her rating for the Rolex Fastnet Race was up from 1.61 to 1.783 for example. Before the Fastnet Wharington explained to us what had been done to the boat - click here to read more about this - but the significant difference is that her keel now cants through +/-40° rather tha +/-12° and they have taken three tonnes out of her bulb and added 3.5m to the mast. Vroom! In comparison Konica Minolta has a fixed keel and although her deck has been fixed and strengthened since the last race, she has not been turboed as Skandia has .

The odds have Skandia, Konica Minolta and APPT, last year's line honours winner, at 8:1, 10:1 and 12:1 respectively, but we think that the separation between these should be bigger, Skandia's odds slightly closer to Alfa Romeo's.

Behind them will be a nice tussle between the two former djuice VO60s, now called ABN AMRO and Seriously Ten, Stephen Ainsworth Reichel-Pugh 60 Loki and Alex Thomson's Open 60 Hugo Boss. Unfortunately the light wind forecast for the start will not bode well for the VO60s and Open 60.

So while this represents the glamorous headline-grabbing fight for line honours glory, who's looking good on handicap?

Looking at the forecast we feel that this year it is most likely to be one of the big boats. Six hourly wind forecast charts can be found on the following pages, but at present the start is set to be a light port tack reach as an area of high pressure moves eastwards to the south of the fleet. This will see the wind back round to the north and gradually build. Overnight on the 28th and into the morning of the 29th (local time) there is going to be a shift to the SSW, on the nose, but by this time the maxis should be home and dry and probably won't see the shift at all - assuming the forecast doesn't change, which of course it may well. Thus the race looks set to have an upwind finale for the smaller boats.

Aside from the maxis, Ray Roberts' DK46 Quantum Racing is being touted as one of the race favourites for the handicap trophy - the Tattersalls Cup - following his win at the recent King's Cup in Malaysia and a dominant performance at the Rolex Trophy. "I think we'll need the conditions on the nose," says Roberts. "If the big maxis get light to moderate conditions then the big boats with their canting keels can really stretch away. But if we get 30 hours of really hard-on-the-nose stuff, we'll have to see if they can hold the boats together. I certainly hope they do, but if the conditions are tough then I think it will certainly suit the smaller boats." Unfortunately this doesn't look like it will be the case.

Quantum Racing is one of three DK46s competing. Other boats in this size range to watch are Yendys, the Judel-Vrolijk 52 of Geoff Ross, the 1999 handicap winner, Goldfinger the golden-hulled Farr 52 of Peter Blake, the IRCA winner in 2003, the two new canting keel Cookson 50s of Michael Hiatt and Irishman Gerard O'Rourke, the latter finishing fifth at Hamilton Island Race Week. Michael Spies won line honours on Nokia in 1999 and the race's overall winner in 2003. Spies, a former 18ft skiff champion, has since graduated up from his Beneteau 40.7 winner in 2003 to his new boat Sirromet Life Style Wine, a Beneteau 47.7. Quest, Anthony Nicholas' Nelson Marek 46 is also to be watched, the boat having won the race in 2002 in the hands of race veteran Bob Steel.

See the following pages for the six hourly wind images for the first three days of the race

Entry list

Boat	Skipper	LOA	Nat	Type
Alfa Romeo	Neville Crichton	30.00	NZ	Reichel Pugh maxi
Konica Minolta	Stewart Thwaites	30.00	NZ	Bakewell-White maxi
Skandia*	Grant Wharington	30.00	VIC	Super maxi
Wild Oats XI	Bob Oatley	30.00	NSW	Reichel Pugh maxi
AAPT	Sean Langman	27.38	NSW	Simonis Voogd maxi
Coogan's Stores	Phil Turner	20.19	TAS	Converted Open 60
Wild Oats X*	Mark Richards	19.70	NSW	Reichel Pugh
ABN AMRO	Andrew Short	19.46	NSW	Volvo Ocean 60
Seriously 10	John Woodruff/Eric Robinson	19.46	NSW	Volvo 60
Inon	Bruce Gray	19.00	NSW	Beneteau
Loki	Stephen Ainsworth	18.29	NSW	Reichel Pugh 60
Hugo Boss	Alex Thomson	18.28	UK	Open 60
Pale Ale Rager	Gary Shanks	17.10	SA	Elliot 56
Kaz	David Pescud	16.20	NSW	Lyons 52
Goldfinger	Peter Blake	15.79	VIC	Farr 52
Yendys	Geoff Ross	15.75	NSW	Judel Vrolijk (JV52)
Flying Fish BMS*	Randall Wilson/Hugh O'Neill	15.50	NSW	Peterson 51
Ragamuffin	Syd Fischer	15.50	NSW	Farr 50
Pekljus	David Ferrall	15.24	NSW	Radford 50
Cadenza	Gunnar Tulsk	15.20	NSW	Farr 50
Living Doll	Michael Hiatt	15.20	VIC	Cookson 50
Chieftain*	Gerard O'Rourke	15.20	IRL	Cookson 50
Heaven Can Wait	Peter Hollis	15.19	QLD	Welbourn 50
Sea Quest	Geoff Smith	15.18	NSW	Radford 50
Flirt	Chris Dare	14.93	VIC	Corby 49
Kioni	Andrew Lygo	14.80	NSW	Beneteau First 47.7
Pretty Fly II	Colin Woods	14.80	NSW	Beneteau First 47.7
Diomedea	David McKay	14.50	NSW	Van de Stadt 48
Prowler	Christian Jackson	14.41	VIC	Elliott 47
Ocean Skins	Tony Fowler	14.30	VIC	Inglis 47
Hardys Secret Mens Business	Geoff Boettcher	14.21	SA	Reichel/Pugh 46
Wot's Next	Graeme Wood	14.20	NSW	Sydney 47
Quest	Anthony Nicholas	14.19	TAS	Nelson Marek 46
Dekadence	Philip Coombs	14.10	VIC	DK46
Quantum Racing	Ray Roberts	14.10	NSW	DK46
Shogun	Rob Hanna	14.10	VIC	DK46
Namadgi	Garth Brice	13.95	ACT	Bavaria 44
Fincorp More Witchcraft	John Cameron	13.95	NSW	Dibley 40
Conergy*	Neil Gray	13.85	GER	Beal 45
Icefire	Jeff Otter	13.85	VIC	Mummery 45
Rush	John Paterson	13.81	VIC	Corel 45
Cougar	Alan Whiteley	13.68	VIC	Beneteau 44.7
Prime Time	David Mason	13.68	NSW	Beneteau First 44.7
Sirromet Life Style Wine	Michael Spies	13.68	NSW	Beneteau First 44.7
Polaris of Belmont	Chris Dawe	13.20	NSW	Cole 43
Jailhouse Grill	Mark Koppelmann	13.18	TAS	Adams 13
Wild Rose	Roger Hickman	13.11	NSW	Farr 43
Tilting at Windmills	Thorry Gunnersen	12.83	VIC	MOD J. Dory 41
Wedgetail	Bill Wild	12.80	QLD	Welbourne 42
Apollonius*	Julian Robinson	12.60	TAS	Robinson 41
Renegade	Robert Francis	12.60	SA	Holland 40
Ray White Koomooloo	Mike Freebairn	12.50	QLD	Kaufman 41
Fuzzy Logic	Paul Roberts	12.47	VIC	ILC 40
AFR Midnight Rambler	Ed Psaltis	12.41	NSW	Farr 40
Aurora	Jim Holley	12.30	NSW	Farr 40 - One Off
Inner Circle	Michael Graham/Darren Cooney	12.24	NSW	Farr 40 IOR
She	Peter Rodgers	12.23	NSW	Olsen 40
Lucifarr	Mark Davies	12.20	NSW	Farr 40
Phillip's Foote Witchdoctor	Maurie Cameron	12.00	NSW	Davidson 42
Chancellor	Ted Tooher	11.92	NSW	Beneteau First 40.7
Sweethart	Anthony Love	11.87	QLD	Jutson 39
Chutzpah	Bruce Taylor	11.79	VIC	Sydney 38
Challenge	Lou Abrahams	11.78	VIC	Sydney 38
Savcor	Peter Westerlund	11.78	SWE	Sydney 38
Star Dean - Willcocks	Ola Strand Andersen	11.78	NSW	Sydney 38
Swish	Steven Proud	11.78	NSW	Sydney 38
Team Lexus	Frank Sticovich	11.78	NSW	Sydney 38
Zen	Gordon Ketelbey	11.78	NSW	Sydney 38
Dodo	Adrian Dunphy	11.78	NSW	Sydney 38
Hidden Agenda	Ross Trembath	11.73	NSW	Sydney 38
Isabella	John Nolan	11.63	NSW	Northshore 380 Sports
Torpan International	Tony Williams	11.63	NSW	Kaufman/Jutson
Addiction	Richard McGarvie/Peter Davidson	11.62	VIC	Inglis 37
Horwath BRI	Tony Levett	11.60	NSW	Sydney 38
Game Set	Stephen Roach	11.30	NSW	Bavaria Match 38
Farr South	Ian Hall	11.16	TAS	Farr 36
Stormy Petrel	Kevin O'Shea	11.12	NSW	Sparkman & Stephen
White Hot	Warren Cottis	11.00	NSW	F36 Razer
Nevenka	Phil Chisholm	10.97	NZ	Townson 36
Balance	Rolf Heidecker	10.74	WA	Lidgard 35
Impeccable	John Walker	10.20	NSW	3/4 tonner IOR
Berrimilla	Alex Whitworth	10.10	NSW	Brolga 33
Gillawa	Greg Dawes	9.76	ACT	Cavalier 975
Toll Shipping Prion*	Michael Dolphin	9.59	VIC	Mod. Mount Gay 30
Tow Truck	Anthony Paterson	9.43	NSW	Mumm 30
Toecutter	Robert Hick	9.15	VIC	Hick 31