Hobart profiles

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

As a boatyard owner, Sean Langman is in the enviable position of being able to modify his one time Open 60 Grundig AAPT at a whim. With just a week to go until the start of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race his 66ft long ocean racing skiff has been undergoing yet more modification.

"The changes we made this last week is that we cut off the hydrofoil at the bow which seems to be a good move given the forecast because it seems to be fairly big waves and we’re going to sail into them," Langman told thedailysail.

The winglets were fitted halfway up the bow. "The idea was for fresh running conditions because the boat does nose dive. It used to nose dive at 28.4 knots and I figured with the reduction of bulb size that we made this year we would lift that to about 30 knots. But we had some problems with the RORC rating office - they couldn’t rate the bow plane. They had the boat flying 25ft above the surface of the moon, so it was easier to remove them in the end."

Aside from merely lopping off the wings, Langman has made the more substantial modification of making his boat's twin rudders retractible.

"The rudders have been our significant change in the last 10 days which has reduced drag significantly in all conditions. We’ve added ¾ ton of water ballast which will come into its own given the forecast because it will be much better for upwind work. The only downside for adding so much power to the boat is that there is a chance we could drive the boat too hard, so there is going to be some times when we take the foot off the pedal."

These are just the latest of a series of modifications Langman has been making all season. "We started with the new rule that came out for water ballasted IMS boats even though we are not sailing under IMS, but to be compliant for the Sydney-Hobart race we had to have 120 degrees of positive stability and we were 118deg. So we fitted the mast with PBO rigging and aircraft screws everywhere and titanium everywhere and we got the rig weight down to a point where we could reduce the bulb size. We were 120.5 degrees and the static heel angle maximum of 10 degrees, we were 9.8 deg. So we have really got the boat as far as we could get it. As far as an Open 60 goes we are an IRC 66. We can’t refine it with fibreglass anymore."

Langman says there is almost none of the original Open 60 left - only the owner!

Looking ahead Langman would ideally like a new boat. "We have Ellen MacArthur’s trimaran in the yard at the moment and we are all excited about that. I like going fast and we’ve had a lot of bang for buck out of Grundig. Looking at Hasso Plattner’s boat in the slings last night - $8 million for a canting keel 86 footer - I still believe I could do a 75 footer for around 2.2 million $ which would beat those boats. It’s a question of whether we can find the support to do that..."

Grundig AAPT is a reaching machine par excellence and will not enjoy the upwind conditions forecast for the start. It is likely that she will make gains on the 100 footers when the wind frees further down the course.

"We need to plane when the 98 footer don’t plane and then we can beat them. We showed that last year with Neville’s boat. On the second night we took 40 miles off them and we were catching her the whole way home."

Sailing with Sean Langman is 49er champion Chris Nicholson.