Hobart profiles

We talk to Sean Langman and Neal MacDonald about their prospective Hobart races

The MacDonalds, Neal and Lisa are part of the 13 strong 'supreme team' on Geoff Ross' Yendys alongside the likes of Alinghi designer Grant Simmer, illbruck navigator Juan Vila, Volvo veteran Jeff Scott and Prada's David Blanchfield.

Sydney-based Geoff Ross, who works in internet security, has had a series of Yendys, including a Beneteau 53 and subsequently a Farr 49 in which he won the 1999 Sydney Hobart race.

Aside from his star cast of crew Ross has applied some straightforward logic to his choice of boat for this year's Rolex Sydney Hobart. The overall handicap prize in the race is awarded to the winner under IMS, so with no time to build new Ross has simply hunted down one of the most heavily IMS optimised boats in the world.

Built in 2002, his new Yendys is a Judel-Vrolijk 52, originally Jose Luis Doreste's Banco Spirito Santos and one of the leading lights on this year's Spanish IMS circuit. In these waters she has already proved herself: At the Rolex International Regatta recently Yendys won under IMS with a race to spare.

Racing around Spain and Sydney Harbour is one thing, but the notorious tender and lightly ballasted Spanish IMS boats are not what one would consider to be the ideal vehicles for the annual blast south to Tasmania.

Neal MacDonald says that he was surprised that the boat in fact didn't feel tender. "It has got a massive IOR type keel. I think it is lead, internal ballast – it has been IMSed. But it doesn’t feel tender. It has got a similar righting moment to a Farr 52. I was surprised by that. I thought it would be really tender. These narrow slab-sided boats they tend to heel over at an angle and lock in there."

Despite this there has been a frantic rush over the last week to get the boat into shape or to 'Hobart' it as MacDonald describes. "You never refit an IMS boat in Europe so suddenly you’ve got to refit it, take the track off the mast, put an aluminium one on, get it re-rated and all the fiddly things to make it Hobart proof."

Among the more awkward jobs this week has been not only realigning the keel but beefing up the hull in this area too. "This time two days ago we didn’t have a keel," quips the former Assa Abloy skipper.

MacDonald has sailed with Ross before and was part of the 1999 winning team. "Geoff put this program together with what looked like an excellent team and I couldn’t resist it. It’s a smaller boat than I’d normally like to go on!"

On board with the highly experienced crew, MacDonald says there are few real roles. Juan Vila navigates, backed up by Simmer. "We have a Hobart guy called Julian Freeman who will one of the other principle steerers and we have some great trimmers. We’ve got Richie Allenson from North Sails who has done the sail program, Bruce Clark from Sydney who is doing all the rigging. We have got pretty much all the offshore positions covered twice over, so it is a good format for doing this race."

Despite being 52ft long, Yendys is a medium-sized boat in this fleet and this could make it awkward for a handicap win as conditions normally favour either the bigger boats or the smaller ones - rarely the medium sized ones "Obviously there are several IMS boats which have done well in the past and it is just a case of us getting the right weather and sailing sensibly and we should be okay," says MacDonald. Interestingly the latest forecast for this Hobart race show the front runners having to negotiate a trough off the Bass Strait. While this will hold up the frontrunners those boats behind may not be.

On page two Grundig 's Sean Langman talks about this week's dramatic modifications to his 66ft skiff