Better luck next time

We speak to Ray Roberts, one of Australia's most successful owner/skippers, about his sailing and his Rolex Sydney Hobart

Like many of competitors in this year's Rolex Sydney Hobart Ray Roberts arrived in Hobart feeling slightly short changed in a race where the wind for him never exceeded 30 knots and was 90% upwind.

Roberts' DK 46 Quantum Racing, which he bought four years ago, has been one of the most successful boats on the Australian circuit. Last year they won all of the major races they entered with the exception of the Rolex Sydney Hobart and a second in the Sydney to Southport race. But for this Hobart race Roberts' chartered a Farr-designed Cookson 50, fitted with a canting keel and trim tab (instead of forward rudder or boards).

In the real world Roberts runs a company called Workforce International that deals with road maintenance work, traffic control and he also owns a company that puts the white lines on roads. He has been sailing for 30 years now, since starting out in his early 20s on a small displacement boat called a Jubilee on Melbourne's Port Philip Bay.

"I probably started a bit late to get to Olympic standard where you should be starting at 11 or 12 years old," Roberts recalls. "Following that I then migrated into the Soling class and I raced that for about six or seven years. I did a lot of Olympic selection trials and tried to get into the Australian Olympic team in the late 1970s, early 1980s." This was the Paul Elvstrom era, when the top Australian in the class was Star Olympic Gold medallist David Forbes. Among the Solings he sailed was one driven by legendary yacht designer Bob Miller/Ben Lexcen of winged keel Australia 2 fame.

Roberts moved into ocean racing when in the 1980s he bought the Holland 42 Admiral's Cupper for the Australian team, Impetuous. This had won the 1979 event where Roberts was involved with the team's management. "She was a little bit past her prime, but I learned a lot out of that boat. That wetted my appetite for ocean racing."

After Impetuous Roberts bought a BH41 he named Millenium. "That was a good boat and I had a lot of success - I won my class in the Sydney-Mooloolaba Race, and won the Brisbane-Gladstone, the Coral Sea Classic, the Cairns to Port Moresby. Then I took the boat up to Asia and I won the King’s Cup up in Thailand, in 1995." He would win the King's Cup again 10 years later in his DK 46.

Following four years in the BH41 he moved on to a Corel 45, he named BZW Challengeafter a division of Barclays Bank. "I had a lot of success in that boat," Roberts continues. "I had a really good crew and I got a fourth in the 1995 Sydney-Hobart Race and I came pretty close to winning it. I stopped when I saw a flare in Bass Straight and I got redress, but not enough for the time that I spent and after that the wind dropped out."

Since getting the DK, Roberts has been riding the crest of a wave with his yacht racing results. He changed to the Cookson 50 for the Rolex Sydney Hobart after being impressed by their performance at Hamilton Island and that of the Irish yacht Chieftain last year. He believes it is better suited to coastal racing rather than windward-leewards.

"The DK is more of a windward-leeward type boat and you get a lot of conditions going south to Hobart and often a lot of reaching and a canting keel 50 footer has an edge when it comes to reaching," he told us prior to the start of the race. "The DK is a good reliable boat whereas the canting keel boat is fast. We are sailing around sometimes at over 20 knots of boat speed and that can be a little scary at times. So you certainly move fast and it is wet. You get a lot of water over the deck, a lot of water sprayed all over you all the time, constantly, but it is a new challenge, it’s exciting. It’s a bit like drugs - once you get on it you can’t get off."

He acknowledged at the time that their only area of weakness was in a lack of time in their chartered boat, although they'd scored a second at the Savills Regatta and won their class in the Rolex Trophy series. Particularly it has taken a while to get to know how to use the canting keel with the trim tab on the aft end of its foil. "The trim tab works well and it is less intrusive into the interior of the boat, but it is a slight compromise," he admitted.

In light of the 90% upwind conditions experienced in the Rolex Sydney Hobart, Roberts might have been advised to sail with the canting keel centred as Living Doll, the other Cookson 50 competing had thereby regaining some ground on their IRC rating .

So where is the Quantum Racing connection? "My sponsor is Quantum Sails, the international sail making group. Their technology is great. I am using their sails on board." He adds: "I own Quantum Sails in Sydney.

"The DeVoses are involved in the international side of the business and that is one of the reasons I bought into the group - because they have the funding to do the R&D into new development and new technology. If you want to be up there in the America’s Cup or the TP 52 circuit you need to be continually evolving sail shapes and membrane technology."



Rolex Sydney Hobart 2006

Quantum Racing was seventh home into Hobart, finishing at 16:02 local time this afternoon in a time of 3 days 3 hours 2 minutes and 29 seconds, putting them in a rather lowly 13th on IRC.

"The canting keel worked really well, but from a rating point of view, it being an all upwind race, it was probably a disadvantage having it," Roberts admitted. "A canting keel boat you can’t outsail your rating penalty in an all upwind race. This boat is primarily and off the wind boat and if we’d had more of that I think it would have been a different result.

"In 25 years of doing the Hobart race, this is the first where I have never had the spinnaker up going south. We had the spinnaker going out of the harbour and going up the Derwent . To be on the wind 90% of the way made it hard for us, but that is what this race is - you have to have the right boat, the right strategy, the right crew and there’s that luck element."

Roberts says that the first 20 hours of this year's race were hard given the upwind conditions and the southerly wind bashing into the south-going current, creating a harsh seaway. "There was a lot of slamming and big seas, but our boat stuck together pretty well. Probably the last third of the race was the difference between where we finished and first place."

Given the conditions boat size also played a part. He cites the example of Matt Allen's VO70 Ichi Ban which was fast enough to make the shift to the southeast and could lay the corner of Tasman Island in one whereas they had to tack. "Any one of the first ten boats could have won - it was just a case of who got into the southeast shift first as you got down to the southern part of Tasmania."

Sailing with his regular crew, on this occasion including America's Cup and Volvo Ocean Race veteran Dee Smith, Roberts says that in the tight battle of the 50 footers, including Geoff Ross' new 55 footer Yendys, Stephen Ainsworth's 60ft Loki and the Nelson Marek TP 52 (the former Yassou/ Glory) Wot Yot of Graeme Wood, they were in visual contact with their competitors most of the time. Able to follow each other visually on the race's Yacht Tracker, they all tended to follow similar tactics. "That is probably why you tend to stay together, you don’t want anyone to get a break on you. So unless there is a really obvious reason to break away from the pack you don’t," says Roberts.

Despite the slamming and prolonged upwind conditions, Quantum Racing survived well. "The boat did everything we asked it to. We pushed it pretty hard. These boat are carbon fibre so all the loads that you get when you are slamming into the big seas and in the troughs, get passed through to the rig and the sails. Nothing gives and nothing bends, so it is really noisy, it is banging, crashing and there are high shock loads, but I am really pleased with how this boat handled the conditions. It took whatever we threw at it and came through."

With this year's Rolex Sydney Hobart done and dusted and once again not with the outcome Roberts desires, it is certain he'll be back next year. In the short term he plans to stay in Hobart for the King of the Derwent and Sailing South Regattas, before returning to his old hunting ground of Port Philip Bay for Skandia Geelong Week.