Rolex Sydney Hobart preview

We assess this year's line honours and top handicap contenders

The race for line honours in this year's Rolex Sydney Hobart has taken a more favourable turn towards Bob Oatley's Mark Richards-skippered Wild Oats XI, the line honours, handicap winning record setter in last year's race due to the latest forecast. Earlier in the week an intense low was forecast to bring 40 knots southerlies to the New South Wales coast on Christmas Day and while the wind would drop to around 30 knots come the Boxing Day start of the annual run south the residual swell clashing with the south going boundary current down the coast was set to make for horrific boat breaking conditions.

However the latest forecast indicates the depression come Tuesday will be centred considerably further to the southeast half way across the Tasman to New Zealand's South Island. As a result the forecast for the start is now 10-12 knots from southwest or south. A seaway will remain particularly offshore and could be as large as 3-4m.

"It is hard to predict because it is a strong function of the exact angle of the high winds that are creating the swell," explains Stan Honey, who has been tempted away from coaching the youth sailors taking part in Roy Disney's Transpac film next year, to resume his duties at ABN AMRO One's chart table. "It could be a bull’s eye on the fleet or it could miss us by a little bit."













Images courtesy of Expedition Navigation Systems

Will Oxley is this year navigating Matt Allen's Ichi Ban, the former Brunel Volvo Open 70. Oxley, a past line honours winner in 2003 on board Skandia, gave us his more comprehensive take on what is likely to go on tactically on the race course next week:

"It is a starboard tack biased race course but if you came out of here and went off on starboard then you are forever getting more and more offshore, but there’ll probably be an opportunity in there to come back in on the first afternoon when the breeze is in its left phase." The wind at the start is expected to be southwest, but is forecast back south over the first 12 hours of the race. "The challenge is always when do you do that," continues Oxley. "If you hit the shore when you are still in that left phase then you are stuck as opposed to waiting and timing it so that it phases right. The same thing happened in 2003 when we were stuck behind Konica and in anticipation of that shift we bore away by 5 degrees and went through below them and then the shift came and we were in front of them and then that was the end of the race... So first shift is quite important. It worked well on that occasion but whether we can do that again….

"The other thing is that there is quite a lot of current offshore at the moment. Some of the fisherman are saying there is a bit more than forecast," says Oxley. The south-flowing current (similar to the Gulf Stream in the northern hemisphere) is expected to be running at around 2-3 knots and its effects are felt beyond the 200m depth contour, roughly 40 miles offshore or possibly more as a southerly pushes more cold water north.

Stan Honey reckons staying offshore is the sensible option: "If I had to decide now I would probably go offshore because I’d be afraid that inshore there’d be some much less breeze and the flatter seas wouldn’t pay for it. With more breeze and favourable current you’d have to be awful damn smart to go inshore. At this instant I’d head off."

With a large section of ocean funnelling through Bass Strait between Tasmania and mainland Australia, the weather at the easterly exit of this is always slightly different compared to the overall conditions. Oxley says that the wind will go more into the south at this stage but the effect of the Strait will be to back the wind into the southwest again. "That is always a tricky one as to how whether you pop back in there and do a short hitch before you get into the Strait proper."

Presumably the technique is to go into the coast here and get lifted out on the shift. Oxley agrees: "Then you have some room if the person is outside you, you can put off by 5 degrees and head south. In that situation south always seems to pay. 'If in doubt head south.'"

While the front runners are hoping to get into Hobart before they are caught by the ridge looming on Thursday before this they may have to tackle a weak front. "How you deal with that front will be the critical part of the race - you could even have the breeze just ahead of it come around enough so that you very briefly see some downwind sailing before the breeze comes back around." The wind may shift into the northwest before returning to the south. "Where you are positioned when that happens is very tricky and you have to set yourself up for that. It is possible after the front goes through and you are offshore, that you can lay Tasman. If you are stuck in on the coast then you are in a bad spot. You just don’t know."

The fight for line honours

Bob Oatley's 98ft Reichel-Pugh maxi is favourite for line honours this year, particularly as Neville Crichton's sistership Alfa Romeo has remained in Europe. Since winning 'the big three' last year, Oats has been fitted with a new keel that is a tonne heavier (the canting angle and mechanism remain the same). Other than that skipper Mark Richards (right) says the only changes they have made are the sails (different to the ones they use in the Med) and small refinements. Alongside navigator Adrienne Cahalan, the Oats crew includes Iain Murray, BMW Oracle Racing's Robbie Naismith and Ian Burns.

Surprisingly Wild Oats XI doesn't have the highest IRC rating in this year's race - this belongs to Charles Brown and Bill Buckley's Maximus. While the Greg Elliott-designed Maximus has suffered in the light regattas she's competed in in the northern hemisphere (even having Paul Cayard on board for the Rolex Middle Sea Race seemed not to help), the Hobart is more an event this boat was built for. Among her crew are a whole roster of offshore heavyweights, from Jeff Scott, Richard Bouzaid, Phil Airey, Matt Humphies, etc. It is thought their rating is so high due to their carrying larger Code 0s and chutes than the opposition in a bid to win line honours.

Rating just a fraction under Wild Oats is Grant Wharington's much modified 30m maxi Skandia. Most dramatic is the boat's new stern - the back 8m of the boat have been modified with a change in rocker profile that has resulted in her waterline length increasing by 3m. Wharro has also been hacking around with the bulb again.

"We put a 15 tonne bulb on last year and it was a light downwind VMG race," he says. "Then we were 11 in Europe and the boat was really light and had a really short waterline because the boat was floating so high because its original design displacement was about 28 tonnes, so 25 was just too light. So we have put the heavy bulb back on, straightened out the waterline and taken a couple of tons of lead back off again. So now we are about 2 tonnes heavier than Wild Oats all on the bulb." The rigs has remained the same but with a new main and J2.

To date Skandia in her new configuration hasn't lined up against the other 30m boats but as Wharington puts it - it will be an upwind race and a boat with good righting moment and a long waterline length should be in the money.

Crew-wise Wharro has most of his normal team with Carl Crawford navigating, but with the additional talent of Nick Moloney and Aussie Olympic Finn representative and former djuice dragons crewman Anthony Nossiter on board.

Two Volvo Open 70s are competing - ABN AMRO One and the former Brunel, now Ichi Ban, which is now technically no longer a VO70. Matt Allen, who has owned the boat since the outset (it was chartered to Grant Wharington for the VOR) has taken over the running of the boat since her return from Gothenberg. The boat has had around 700kg added to her bulb, taking her out of class. They have also followed the likes of Skandia and Wild Oats in going down the powered winches route. They also have a new sail wardrobe on board and have lopped the top off the cabin to make it sleeker.

The main issue this week with the VO70s has been their over their IRC rating, with particular relation to their flat topped mainsails.

As Mike Sanderson explained to us: "They are saying they have corrected an error which they have missed in square topped mainsails recently. It is a slightly odd situation because the technical committee for the IRC went to the IRC Congress, the governing body of it and tried to get the head width (the 'headboard' as they called it) included in the mainsail area. They already measure 7/8th girth so it is already really high up the sail and they wanted it to include head width and the IRC Congress declined this and felt that the 7/8th girth was looking after it and it wasn’t really a very big deal. And that’s how it has been ticking along. However in the 2004 version of the rule, that was before the 7/8ths girth rule, there is something in there that says that with weird anythings - roaches,etc - that are considered to be outside of the rule boundaries of the normality of a cruiser racer, can be added to the rig factor. So that is what they have done."

As a result they have been docked two points. For the Hobart race they have opted for smaller chutes and jibs and Sanderson reckons they came down 7 points in all and then had two put back on the rig factor. As a result ABN AMRO's TCC is now 1.605 while Ichi Ban are a slower 1.591 despite their heavier keel.

Sanderson continues: "The funny thing is - what about the fact that ABN AMRO won every trophy at Cowes Week? What about Alfa Romeo winning the Rolex Maxi Worlds? Their answer [the RORC Rating Office] was that 'well, we can only give a rating based upon the information that we are told'. You can’t tell me that the RORC didn’t know that ABN AMRO had a square topped mainsail considering that the mainsail has one of their stamps on it from the Volvo Ocean Race..."

Racing on ABN AMRO One are a mixture of crews from the black and white ABN AMRO boats including Brad Jackson, Stan Honey, Rob Greenhalgh, Seb Josse, Brian Macinnes, Justin Slattery, Scott Beavis with additional talent by way of the new Mrs Sanderson (aka Emma Richards) and Chris Nicholson.

Ichi Ban meanwhile looks like a new boat and has an equally all-star cast with sailing master and Hobart race Michael Spies, handicap winner in 2003. The line-up includes Stu Bannatyne, Michael Coxon (on leave from Alfa Romeo) and David Rolf.

Handicap honours

This is always a hard one to predict in a race where the weather can be so variable. The present feeling two days away from the start is that the forecast is set to make it either a big boat race or a very small boat race, the tailenders able to fly into Hobart with favourable winds. So in this section we'll just concentrate on those campaigns that seem to be making the most effort.



Two of the top contenders have to be the Reichel Pugh designs slot machine manufacturer Stephen Ainsworth's 18 month old 60ft racer cruiser Loki (above) and the brand spanking new 55ft out and out racer Yendys of Geoff Ross. You can read more about the smart new Chinese-built Yendys here but these two boats are lining up in a major way, just one second separating the two boats after time corrections at the recent Rolex Trophy Rating Series. Generally it is though that Loki is the better light wind boat and therefore will be pleased with the latest forecast.

Loki are definitely on fire at present having won the Rolex Trophy Rating Series and before that Savills Regatta and coming second at Hamilton Island. While the Loki crew is bristling with BMW Oracle talent, so Loki are lighter on 'name' pros but feature Etchells World Champion Cameron Miles and round the world sailor Tom Braidwood.



Two canting keel Cookson 50s are taking part, oddly with Ray Roberts' Quantum Racing (above) in Division 0 and Michael Hiatt's Living Doll in Division 1. The principle difference is that the latter is racing with her keel locked off for reasons of handicap. On the race course Roberts has been on fire for the last two years winning most races he has entered aboard his DK 46. The only downside to his campaign is that his move into the Cookson 50 (which he's chartered) has only been quite recent and he says he is still new to the quirks of this boat which features a canting keel uniquely fitted with a trim tab on it.

"I think it is more suited for coastal racing," says Roberts of why he has foresaken his DK for this race. "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." Racing on board is the UK's Abby Seager and Mr "If there's a regatta, I'm there" Dee Smith.



Also to be watched in this size range are Richard Matthew's old Corby 49 Flirt(above), now owned by Chris Dare, Geoff Boettcher's (left) Reichel Pugh 46 Hardys Secret Mens Business and Chris Bull's J/145 Jazz, the top competitor from the UK this year. Among the Jazz crew are Olympic veteran Rodney Patisson on the helm, crew boss Nigel King, navigator Mike Broughton, with Hamble's finest Jerry Eplett in charge of trimming. Bull has strong ties with Malta and is a regular competitor in the Rolex Middle Sea Race and also has in his crew line-up Malta's own Christian Ripard.

Among his competition Bull rates the modified Farr 40 AFR Midnight Rambler sailed by winners of the gruesome 1998 race, Ed Psaltis and Bob Thomas in their previous boat, a Hick 35. "In short offshore races where conditions are like in shore conditions he does well, but if it is a tough upwind Hobart I wouldn’t fancy doing it in a Farr 40," says Bull.

The Rolex Sydney Hobart gets underway on Boxing Day at 1300 local time (0200 GMT).

See the list of division and handicaps here -