Sydney-Hobart 2008 | målgång

Peter Gustafsson News irc, quantum, sydney hobart, tp52 5

Quest verkar ha tagit hem årets Sydney-Hobart under handikapp. Foto: Rolex/Daniel Forster

Fyra TP52 i topp var kanske lite oväntat? Men man har hunnit optimera dessa designer några generationer plus att man antagligen får ganska bra träning mot varandra. Annars en mix mellan 47 och 80 fot på topp 10:

1 Quest, Farr TP52, 1.341, Bob Steel (17) NSW
2 Cougar II, Farr TP52, 1.345, Alan Whiteley (2) VIC
3 Wot Now, J/V TP52, 1.358, Graeme Wood (3) NSW
4 Ragamuffin, Farr TP52, 1.344, Syd Fischer (39)
5 Yendys, R/P 55, 1.379, Geoff Ross (13) NSW
6 Quantum Racing, Cookson 50, 1.355, Ray Roberts (16) NSW
7 Limit, R/P 62, 1.495, Alan Brierty (5) WA
8 Loki, R/P 63, 1.492, Stephen Ainsworth (11)
9 Secret Mens Business 3, R/P 47, 1.299, Geoff Boettcher (19) SA
10 ASM Shockwave 5, R/P 80, 1.543, Andrew Short (15) NSW

LINE HONOURS = Wild Oats XI, R/P 98, 1.928
IRC 0 = Quantum Racing, Cookson 50, 1.355
IRC 1 = Quest, Farr TP52, 1.341
IRC 2 = Ragtime, Spencer 65, 1.274
IRC 3 = Tow Truck, Ker 11.3, 1.148
IRC 4 = Maluka of Kermandie, 0.898

Wild Oats XI fick till sist till en historisk fjärde line-honour.

1 Wild Oats XI 01:20:34:14 14.1 M Richards (4) NSW
2 Skandia 01:21:41:17 13.8 Grant Wharington (2) VIC
3 Ichi Ban 01:22:28:10 13.5 Matt Allen (19) NSW
4 ASM Shockwave 5 01:22:57:30 13.4 Andrew Short (15) NSW
5 Limit 01:23:05:58 13.3 Alan Brierty (5) WA
6 Black Jack 01:23:19:31 13.3 Mark Bradford (3) QLD
7 Loki 01:23:29:50 13.2 Stephen Ainsworth (11) NSW
8 Yendys 02:00:57:05 12.8 Geoff Ross (13) NSW
9 Quest 02:01:00:37 12.8 Bob Steel (17) NSW
10 Wot Now 02:01:10:26 12.8 Graeme Wood (3) NSW

Wild Oats XI.

Black Jack & Loki.

Quest.

IMPERIOUS OATS
December 28, 2008
Wild Oats XI strode majestically up the Derwent River this morning to beat Skandia by one hour seven minutes and score a record fourth consecutive line honours victory in the Rolex Sydney Hobart after one of the best tactical battles seen at the head of the fleet in the race’s 64-year history.

Lighter winds off the Tasmanian coast in the last 18 hours of the race robbed Wild Oats XI of the chance of beating the race record she set in 2005 at one day 18 hours 40 minutes and ten seconds. The drop in wind strength did give Mark Richards and crew the opportunity to make use of Wild Oats XI’s bigger wardrobe of headsails to catch and pass Skandia, which had led her with better speed and sound tactics for the first 22 hours.
Both maxis were built to meet the race’s 30m maximum overall length limit and have the CBTF (canting ballast, twin foil) underwater appendage configuration. But the Don Jones-designed Skandia, owned by the talented young Mornington (Victoria/AUS) skipper Grant Wharington, is four years older and is a leaner programme than Wild Oats XI, a Reichel/Pugh design owned by Bob Oatley of Sydney.
Wharington decided to race with a reduced wardrobe of headsails and fewer crew -18 compared to Wild Oats’ 24 – to save weight. In the fresh running conditions after the start, the more lightly loaded Skandia was faster running under big asymmetric spinnakers. With some smart tactical calls and the help of favourable current from an eddy off the south coast of New South Wales, Skandia gained a narrow lead overnight and held it across Bass Strait as the northerly gradient wind re-asserted on Saturday.
The fairy tale was not to last. Last evening as the maxis closed on the Tasmanian coast, both slowed as conditions calmed. In the tricky light transitional breezes that followed, Wild Oats’ light-air reaching headsails came into play. She was first into the new breeze from the northwest and within an hour was doing 7-5 knots to Skandia’s 2.5 knots. In the small hours, Wild Oats XI converted her speed advantage into a handy lead of 14.6 nm as she rounded Tasman Island, 41 nm from the finish. From there she sailed conservatively, finishing with two reefs in the mainsail as the winds freshened to 28 knots and gusted sharply during the final beat up the Derwent.
Conceivably, Wild Oats XI may have been slowed over the first part of the race by picking up underwater debris on her keel in the early stages. Tactician/helmsman Iain Murray said the boat seemed faster after it stopped and reversed to free a two-metre shark caught on its aft steering rudder around 2100 AEDT on Saturday night and helm, Mark Richards confirmed that everything felt better after clearing the unfortunate shark.
The crews of Skandia and Wild Oats XI agreed dockside that the race was the highest calibre they had experienced in maxis. Wharington commented shortly after the finish that, “it was really great to be racing on the same bit of water and race them boat for boat. Tactically we sailed a really good race; the crew did a fantastic job, I don’t think we would have done anything differently. We found we were faster than them in the fresh running conditions. Keeping the boat light obviously worked really well for us.” Wharington was quick to recognise the balance of power was not in his favour, continuing, “they’ve got twice as many sails. On the first afternoon we put up our A2 spinnaker and pulled it down 24 hours later and we watched them do seven sail changes before dark the first night. We’ve only got seven sails on the boat. I think they have 18!” Wharington agreed that not having more light air sails eventually told off the Tasmanian coast, but he also pointed out that having more sails meant more work.
Mark Richards agreed, explaining the 50 or more sail changes the Wild Oats XI crew had to make over the course of the race were physically stressful on his crew: “It was very, very difficult for us. Most teams would have probably fallen apart. We sat down and had a good crew talk during the race just to make sure we could hold it together and we did. The boys did a fantastic job, with all the sail changing and stuff and that’s what got us there in the end.”
Bob Oatley, who is 80 and unable to race any more after a long history of owning and sailing on a series of successful offshore racing boats, was overjoyed as he watched Wild Oats XI finish, “It’s just one fantastic thrill; I can’t describe it other than that really,” he said. “The record books? I don’t care much about them. It’s the thrill of doing it, wonderful.”
Pressed on whether Wild Oats would go for a fifth consecutive line honours in 2009, Oatley was coy, asking that his crew be allowed to enjoy the success and efforts of this year, without worrying about the next. Asked whether he would he build another boat? His answer was much more succinct, “no, if I built another one it would be identical to this one and so what’s the point?” With Wild Oats XI undefeated in its quest for line honours at the Rolex Sydney Hobart over four years of racing, Oatley’s view seems hard to challenge.
The race for overall victory is still on. At 1530 AEDT twelve yachts had finished, with Bob Steel’s TP52 Quest currently lying in first place on handicap. The countdown clock is ticking and whilst Steel and his crew look to have few threats, their prospects will become clearer with each passing hour.
Of the 100 yachts that started on 26 December, three have retired (Georgia, Sanyo Maris and Inner Circle) and twelve have finished. The first foreign yacht expected home is Chris Welsh’s Ragtime (USA), due in some time this evening.

5 Comments

Peter Gustafsson
Dec 28, 2008 @ 11:25
FLYING FIFTIES FIND IT FAST AND FURIOUS
December 28, 2008
Strong WNW winds off the Tasmanian coast last night and a northwesterly reaching gale force in the Derwent River today blew the 50-55ft boats home to dominate the provisional handicap placings in IRC Division 0 and Division 1 of the 64th Rolex Sydney Hobart. Incredibly, given the size difference, the first TP52 to finish, Bob Steel’s Quest, was only four and a-half hours behind the Line Honours winner Wild Oats XI. The race has been so fast many yachts have beaten the bags freighted to Hobart for the crews. This has not prevented them heading off to celebrate in their not so fragrant sailing gear.
The sensationally fast downwind TP52s provisionally fill the first three places on corrected time in IRC Division 1 for the biggest fixed-keel boats. Quest has corrected out 28 minutes ahead of Cougar II (Alan Whiteley) with Graeme Wood’s Wot Now in third and race veteran Syd Fischer’s Ragamuffin in fourth. With all boats home in class, Ray Roberts’ Cookson 50 has won IRC Division 0 for canting-keeled boats from CYCA Commodore Matt Allen’s Jones 70 Ichi Ban with Peter Harburg’s Reichel/Pugh 66 Black Jack third. Line Honours winner Wild Oats XI was last in this five-boat division, with Skandia in fourth.
Quest also has a strong chance of winning the Tattersalls Cup, the major trophy, for the overall IRC handicap winner. But with most of the fleet still at sea in developing winds, this is still very much a maybe rather than a certainty. Steel, who won the race in 2002 with a previous Quest, returned to the race after a five-year break with some of the crew from that win, including sailing master Michael Green, a veteran of 28 Hobart races. Green felt the hardest part of the race was the last 11 nautical miles with up to 50 knots of northerly in the Derwent River.
Steel explained that Quest got a break on the other TP52s and similar-sized boats on the first night, with an early gybe back towards the New South Wales coast, “a bit of a funny front went through; we gybed in and out the back of it; it only lasted for about 20 or 30 minutes. We found steady breeze and away we went. We ended up ahead of our opposition by four or five miles.”
An offshore course paid off for Quest on the approach to Tasman Island, at the southernmost tip of Tasmania, where she made a big gain on her closest rival Cougar II. Despite a seemingly strong position, Steel was understandably reluctant to talk about the possibility of overall victory before the CYCA confirms the situation, “we’ll just have to wait and see, but I am confident we have won our division. Maybe we’ve won the whole thing, which would be pretty good for an old bloke.”
Cougar II’s skipper Alan Whiteley, although he may have lost a winning chance, thoroughly enjoyed the race, “it was very fast; the boat is incredibly fast. We had 15 hours doing 18, 20, 24 knots.” Great fun, but not without its problems, as he continued, “it wears the crew out physically. We don’t have electric grinders. But it was lots of fun.”
Ragamuffin’s skipper Syd Fischer, who is 81 and was sailing his 40th Rolex Sydney Hobart, could not remember one with as much hard downwind running as this one, “I enjoyed the race; the blokes did a helluva good job. At times we were doing 24 knots in 24 knots of breeze. I must say the body squeaks a bit.”
Whilst the race conditions have favoured the 50-footers, between them and the Line Honours battle was squeezed another contest between three 60-footers and the 80-foot ASM Shockwave. Roger Hickman, who skippered and helmed Alan Brierty’s brand new R/P62 Limit into fifth place in IRC 1, confirmed that the competition in this group was no less intense and that this latest series of very fast downwind boats were “a little exhausting’.
“They’re bigger and they’re faster, but the work load just gets more and more. You are always on the edge, either with the jib top and the jib top staysail or with the 3A, or with the Code Zero. You push, push, push and you are doing 15 to 18 knots down waves in 12 knots of breeze,” Hickman describes with a smile on his face. “The whole crew is poised for the next sail change. You don’t get to sit back and say, ‘Gee this is lovely; look at Maria Island or look at the Schoutens’!”
Stephen Ainsworth, skipper of the very similar new R/P63 Loki, said: “The race was great. We got here in less than two days and if every Hobart race was like that, I would be very pleased.” A sentiment echoed by many of the crews that finished today. Ainsworth is clearly delighted with his new steed, “it was so much fun; we had some great rides; last night in particularly we were carrying a spinnaker 4A, the wind was blowing up to 33, 34 knots and we were honking. Close to 29 knots under spinnaker is going some.” Adding after a bit of reflection, “it was a bit scary; a white knuckle ride.”
With the balance of the fleet spread mainly between Tasman Island to the south and midway through Bass Strait to the north, all eyes are on how the weather will develop over the next few critical hours. The back markers face a torrid night with westerlies building to beyond 25 knots through the Strait, particularly between northeastern tip of Tasmania and Cape Barren Island. Those in the lee of Tasmania face difficulties of a different nature, having to transit from a northwesterly flow into a southwesterly flow at some point in the darkness.
The first of the foreign boats Ragtime (USA) has escaped these weather conundrums, and at 2000 AEDT was approaching the Organ Pipes at Cape Raoul. With luck she should pass this stunning rock formation in daylight and finish sometime during the night. French yacht Lady Courrier is almost level with Eddystone Point, along side Jus’ Do It (GBR), with the eastern seaboard of Tasmania to come. Walross IV (GER) and 41 Sud (New Caledonia) are side by side east of Cape Barren Island, whilst the two Dutch S&S 41s Winsome and Pinta-M are engaged in a private battle off Flinders Island, with Winsome holding a ten nm advantage. Swiss yacht Pachamama has yet to enter the Strait after her layover off Eden.
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Erik
Dec 28, 2008 @ 20:04
Vi heier på Ola Strand Andersen i Sydney 38 J-Steel. De har falt litt tlbake nå og ligger på 3dje plass. Vi håper de gir gass mot mål
Erik
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Peter Gustafsson
Dec 29, 2008 @ 10:29
DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN
December 29, 2008
(1730 AEDT) Long-time Sydney ocean-racing campaigner Bob Steel, in a sentimental return to the Rolex Sydney Hobart after a five-year break, has won the race’s major prize, the Tattersall’s Cup, for the overall handicap winner, for the second time with a yacht named Quest.
Steel won the Tattersall’s Cup in 2002 with a previous Quest, a Nelson/Marek 46, and is famously remembered for throwing the watch he was wearing at the time into Sullivans Cove upon receiving the winner’s Rolex Yacht-Master.
Inspired by the good competition developing in Australia between the TP52 class boats, which handicap well under the IRC rating system besides racing as a class in the Mediterranean, he bought a two-year-old Farr-design. After performing well in inshore regattas, he decided to have another crack at the Rolex Sydney Hobart with as many of his 2002-winning team as he could enlist.
Besides Steel there were five of the old crew present this year, including: sailing master Michael Green, Peter Messenger, Andrew Pearson, Bruce Baker and Carl Crafoord, the navigator in 2002. This win is Crafoord’s fourth in the Rolex Sydney Hobart. He joined the 2008 crew as strategist on 72-hours notice, when Steel and Green felt in view of the complex weather situation unfolding that he could help navigator Bruce Baker.
Green, who was sailing his thirtieth Rolex Sydney Hobart, said: “I asked Carl and Bruce to be a husband and wife team; come up with a result and tell me what to do. That gave me more time to do what I believe I do best, which is making the boat go fast. We were never below top speed the whole way, continually 20 plus.”
Quest’s winning break from the other TP52s and similarly sized fast boats like Ray Roberts’ Cookson 50 Quantum Racing and Geoff Ross’ Reichel/Pugh Yendys came on the first night when she gybed away from the pack and headed back towards the New South Wales coast. “We’d been tracking the current, trying to make a decision between wind and current,” said Green, describing the critical moment. “When the latest GRIB (computer generated forecast files) came through we realised there was going to be wind inside us so we decided to take the option of going down the edge of the eddy and into more wind, where earlier the GRIB had said there was going to be no wind. We gybed back in, shot down the eddy and once we got down the eddy we came back out.”
Green estimated that when Quest gybed back across the line of the other fifty-footers, she was in front by four miles. “I think the current made a knot of difference in the four hours.” It may not sound much, but the tightness of the finishing times between the TP52s, four finished within forty-five minutes of eachother, shows how crucial the smallest gain was to the eventual result.
Quest held a similar lead over her nearest rival, Cougar II, Alan Whiteley’s well-sailed TP52 from Melbourne, at Tasman Light. Steel then anxiously faced a northwesterly gusting over 40 knots in Storm Bay, for the last upwind 40 nm of the race. Cougar II had been superior to windward in winning the IRC grand prix class at the Audi Hamilton Island Race Week regatta by two points from Quest in August. But the heavier keel bulb Steel has had fitted since then allowed her to match Cougar II in the strong northwesterly. “We had all the stiffness, could put the speed on and we got away from them a little bit,” said Green, who went on to explain that it had not all been plain sailing describing a gust of 48 knots that hit Quest in the Derwent River, “we had a 15-second warning that it was going to hit,” said Green. “We ripped the main and had to nurse that to the finish.”
At the announcement of his Tattersall’s Cup win, Steel was quick to praise his crew, “this year’s was probably one of the best and strongest fleets ever; so to be in front is a real tribute to the crew, so well done guys. I have a serious bunch of yachties here; they did it all for me. I sat right in my corner on one side and they say it’s fairly intimidating because I am always looking at them. I say nothing so it’s great.”
Michael Green says Steel, who is in his mid 60s, is by no means a silent observer, “he’s always yapping away; ‘Are you off speed, have you thought this one out, have you doubled checked?’ He’s a team man, a team leader and he just makes it simple. As a motivator he is absolutely fantastic. He has unbelievable endurance. He didn’t leave the deck for the first day.”
Green went on to explain the crew’s all-for-one approach to race, “we had a team meeting beforehand and made the decision as a group that we were going to stay up and help each other out. As the guys started to fall asleep on the deck we put them down below one by one. So basically the crew was up for 48 hours.”
At 1800 AEDT thirty yachts had finished – including Telcoinabox Merit, the rescuer of the Georgia crew – and, with six yachts retired and one disqualified, sixty-three are still racing. Of the international contingent, Géry Trentesaux’s Lady Courrier (FRA) is just north of the turning point at Tasman Island; Ian Darby’s Jus’ Do It (GBR) is 20 nm further back; Walross IV (GER), Mustang Sally (NZL), Time Lord (NZL) and 41 Sud (New Caledonia) are back up the course by Mariah Island, where the two Dutch yachts Winsome and Pinta-M are continuing their paso double, with Harry Heijst’s crew holding a ten-mile advantage over Atse Blei’s.
The central part of the eastern seaboard of Tasmania has been in the lee of the strong west to northwest winds much of today making for testing sailing conditions for the slower and smaller yachts still at sea today. The challenge has been made worse, by the fleet facing up to 25 knots from the west-northwest and two- to three-metre seas as they round Tasman Island.
With news that Swiss yacht Pachamama has retired, last place in the fleet is held by Chris Dawe’s Polaris of Belmont, a Cole 43 from 1970, currently 20 nm northeast of Eddystone Point at the northern tip of Tasmania and still with a third of the 628 nm course to go. Sean Langman is more commonly associated with yachts at the front of the fleet and, with his usual rivals all in Hobart within two days, he could be excused for wondering whether he made the right decision to head south in the seventy-six year old Maluka of Kermandie his restored gaff-rigger. Some comfort tonight would be news that, although he is in eighty-ninth place on the water, he currently leads IRC Division 4.
PROVISIONAL LEADERBOARDS
IRC OVERALL (Provisional Top Three)
1. Quest, Bob Steel (AUS/NSW), TP52
2. Cougar II, Alan Whiteley (AUS/VIC), TP52
3. Wot Now, Graeme Wood (AUS/NSW), TP52
PROVISIONAL DIVISION LEADERS
IRC Div 0: Quantum Racing, Ray Roberts (AUS/NSW), Cookson 50
IRC Div 1: Quest, Bob Steel, (AUS/NSW), TP52
IRC Div 2: Ragtime, Chris Welsh (USA), Spencer 65
IRC Div 3: Tow Truck, Anthony Paterson (AUS/NSW), Ker 11.3
* IRC Div 4: Maluka of Kermandie, Sean Langman (AUS/NSW), Gaff Rigger
PHS Div 1: Getaway-Sailing.com, Peter Goldsworthy (AUS/NSW), Volvo 60
* PHS Div 2: Inca, Noel Sneddon (AUS/ACT), Vickers 41
* Sydney 38: Morris Finance Cinquante, Ian Murray (AUS/VIC)
* Cruising: Somoya, Garry Rose (AUS/VIC), Northshore 46
Reply
Peter Gustafsson
Dec 30, 2008 @ 11:03
Quest är förresten gamla Bright Star
http://www.farrdesign.com/533.htm (någon undrade).
Här är en bra debrief http://www.sail-world.com/USA/index.cfm?SEID=0&Nid=52329&SRCID=0&ntid=0&tickeruid=0&tickerCID=0
‘I felt that we didn’t have enough muscle in the Brains Trust so we decided to ask the highly successful navigator/tactician Carl Crafoord to join us, but on three conditions; firstly, that he didn’t touch a rope for the whole race, secondly that he think 6 hours ahead of the boat the whole time and thirdly that he sit with our navigator Bruce Baker and argue like husband and wife until they came up with the answers’.
Asked what changes they had made to Quest to keep her competitive against other TP52s Green laughed,
‘We have much to thank Jamie MacPhail for’, referring to Quest’s serious collision with the aptly named Surprise Rock at this year’s Audi Hamilton Island Race Week.
McPhail who was steering at the time was thrown forward with such force that he snapped the port steering pedestal clean off at the base. The keel was also damaged to a point that warranted a total rebuild.
‘The new keel is heavier in the bulb and lighter in the keel itself; we’ve also worked hard on getting our rating down’ he explained.
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Ragtime | gammal är äldst | blur
Jan 5, 2009 @ 16:52
[…] Gustafsson Ragtime från 1964 (hon var ju för radikal för att vara med i Sydney Hobart då. Men i år kom hon tillbaka… och spikade IRC 2 […]
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