Fatal Storm (8 page)

“For some reason I just picked it. Regardless, you should always be ready for rough weather. For us, with the boat being 40 years old, we always take our race preparation very seriously, but this time we were even more prepared. At the last moment I had a new storm trysail made and we were attending to all of the issues for a heavy race. I ordered a new liferaft and had an EPIRB [Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon] fitted to that. All of our crew were provided with full sets of Musto HPX wet weather gear together with flotation vests and integrated safety harnesses. I wanted everyone to be dry and comfortable because on
Canon Maris
we just live, eat, sleep, sail and breathe the race. No one gets out of their
sailing gear during the race. Everyone is ready to go on deck at all times. That way there’s none of the frigging around with guys saying,
‘
Who’s got my seaboots and my safety harness?’”

The six
Canon Maris
crew were at Mosman Bay Marina, as required, at 9am, resplendent in their red shirts, white shorts and the traditional
Maris
beret, a tribute to artist and original owner Jack Earl.
Canon Maris
,
Winston Churchill
and
Southerly
were set for a veteran’s race among themselves. Beers and rum ‘n’ Cokes were the wager and the bets would be paid and collected at a waterfront hotel in Hobart.

As
Canon Maris
headed out of the bay the crew enjoyed some light banter with the team preparing one of the hottest contenders for handicap honours – Syd Fischer’s 50-footer,
Ragamuffin.
Fischer, at the ripe old age of 73 had, without question, been Australia’s most successful ocean racing yachtsman. He had won just about everything that mattered, including the Hobart race, the 600-mile Fastnet Race, the Admiral’s Cup and the Kenwood Cup. He led the Australian team to victory in the disastrous 1979 Fastnet Race. This was to be Fischer’s 30th Sydney to Hobart.

Docked at the harbourfront doorstep of Fischer’s three-level dark-timber residence was a fleet of yachts including his 1995 America’s Cup race entrant and of course the mighty “Rags”. The large room on the lower level of the home had been given over to yacht racing memorabilia and photographs covering Fischer’s near 40 years of offshore competition. Minutes before
Canon Maris
glided past, Fischer had assembled the crew – a powerful blend of experience and raw, young energy – in the “racing room” so sailing master Grant Simmer could brief them on race weather and tactics. For 21-year-old crewmember Nathan Ellis this was his initiation to the classic. Once the briefing
was over the crew moved outside to make the important final checks.

Immediately adjacent to the CYC, the Royal Australian Navy’s headquarters at Garden Island was also bristling with pre-race activity. The Navy’s youth training vessel, the 144-foot
Young Endeavour
, Britain’s bicentennial gift to Australia in 1988, was being prepared to go to sea. The classically proportioned brigantine was to act once again as the radio relay vessel. The previous week the CYC’s chief radio operator Lew Carter and his team of technicians had installed the bank of radios needed to communicate with the fleet.

It was a symbolic Hobart race for Carter. He had completed no fewer than 16 races aboard yachts and had done an additional nine as radio operator which took him to the magic number of 25. Lew’s two volunteer assistants, Michael and Audrey Brown, were also entrusted with a highly demanding job. Despite having retired to Mooloolaba, in Queensland, they would provide strong support for Carter in what is an around-the-clock task. When the trio arrived at Garden Island on Boxing Day and were welcomed aboard by the ship’s captain, Lieutenant Commander Neil Galletly, Carter had two concerns.

“I always thought it was going to be a rough year, just by looking at the weather patterns that you could see leading up to it, even over a couple of months. I was at the race briefing and after listening to Ken Batt deliver his forecast I thought he was pretty sceptical about the whole thing. He didn’t seem to be able to say what he thought we were going to get. I sensed he glossed over a few things without giving his true opinion. He seemed to have a bet each way.”

Carter was also worried about the radios that had been installed for the race.

“The radios are checked while the ship is at the dock but I have said for a number of years I considered the procedure insufficient. My opinion is that the radios should be tested at sea probably a fortnight prior to the race and preferably during some of the club’s short ocean races. I think it would be a good idea to incorporate skeds [from
schedule
; the position reports from all race yachts] into those short ocean races to acclimatise ourselves and the yachties again with procedures. To test the radios on
Young Endeavour
at Garden Island is very difficult. You don’t get out properly because there are so many buildings and other areas of interference. This time I wasn’t happy with the radio right from the start, right from when we were in Garden Island. I didn’t appear to be getting to some of the places that I thought we should have been able to contact.”

Back at the CYC, the atmosphere was electric. John “Steamer” Stanley and Michael “Beaver” Rynan had been driven to the club and young Michael’s eyes were like golfballs and his mouth agape as he took in the excitement of the morning of his first Hobart race. The pair made their way to
Winston Churchill
and met up with the rest of the crew. Crisp new boldly-striped shirts and shorts were issued and once everything had been readied, most of them paraded back along the dock in their new attire to enjoy a few drinks with mates before they put to sea.

Steamer spotted race meteorologist Ken Batt. He sat down with him and showed him some old photographs of
Winston Churchill
in the first Hobart race in 1945.
“Ken had some relations racing on the yacht that year and I was trying to see if he could identify them.” Naturally they also discussed the weather and Batt confirmed what he had said at the briefing – there was a chance the fleet would be buffeted by winds up to 50 knots and that it was going to be sou’west turning west. Steamer thought, “hang on, this doesn’t sound right,” but Batt could offer nothing more due to the instability of the pattern.

Meanwhile Ian Kiernan was easing
Canon Maris
into “The Pond” next to the outdoor bar. Kiernan’s wife, Judy, was put ashore so she could join a spectator boat. The bar was buzzing and among the myriad faces, Kiernan recognised plenty of mates, including Stanley and Mickleborough. “We had to put up with the bloody ragging of Mickleborough and his bloody larrikin
Southerly
crew – ‘we’ll be on the dock with a beer for you, and all that shit’,” recalls Kiernan. “Then I looked across and there was Steamer just sipping on a schooner. I gave him the finger and he knew what it meant – the race was on. He smiled, gave me the Hawaiian Salute – the thumb and the little finger – and continued drinking. Jim Lawler was nearby and I shouted out ‘hi’ to him. He was looking just like a bloody prince of a man in his sailing hat. I exchanged calls of ‘good luck’ with Gouldy and Richard Winning. They had brought
Winston Churchill
’s performance right up and we knew they were going to be bloody hard to beat.”

The
Canon Maris
crew pushed their yacht away from the dock, Kiernan slipped the engine into gear, eased the throttle forward, turned his charge away from the marina and motored off towards the start line.

On the way out they had an impromptu team meeting so Kiernan could remind them of what was expected. “Guys, I think we’re going to have a heavy and wet
weather race,” said Kiernan. “We’ve all got plenty of experience but I want to remind you that the executive decisions are made by Dick Hammond and myself. We want your feedback all the time but we don’t want chatter in times of decision. Keep yourselves clipped on. Sail conservatively but quickly and enjoy the bloody race.” Hammond confirmed the heavy weather theory and outlined what he expected for the run down the coast that afternoon and when the blow might arrive that night.

The
Winston Churchill
crew had also decided it was time to move. They returned to the yacht, farewelled their support team, including Stephanie Winning and the children, then guided their historic and graceful lady out onto the harbour.

Peter Joubert’s
Kingurra
was one yacht that had gone out onto the harbour early. Crewman Peter Meikle recalls it was for a very good reason.

“Peter always makes us put up the storm jib and the trysail before the start. He does it every year so that the old-timers are reacquainted with the settings and any new guys know where it all goes – and learn how not to scratch the varnish. I remember distinctly sailing past a few race boats with lots of people wearing smart matching shirts. They were all pointing at us, laughing and carrying on. The same blokes would probably be saying later on that what we did should be a compulsory pre-start practice.”

The team from North Queensland aboard Wayne Millar’s yacht,
B-52
, departed the CYC marina and headed out onto the harbour grinning from ear to ear. The forecast nor’easterly for the first half-day of the race should allow them to produce their secret weapon – a blooper. The youngest generation of sailors in the race would never have heard of a blooper. To them the word meant an embarrassing mistake, nothing more. It was, in
fact, a special offshore racing sail that was in vogue 20 years earlier. In the Hobart race it was deemed illegal for the Grand Prix division, the IMS (International Measurement System) yachts. But as the boys from Townsville discovered, it was quite legal in their division, the CHS (Channel Handicap System) section.

Curiously, it was due to that ignorance that the sail came into existence.
B-52
crewmember and Townsville solicitor John Byrne had discovered the blooper loophole in the CHS rule just before the Hobart. “I mentioned tallboys and bloopers to a group of young sailors and they looked at me with blank stares,” Byrne recalls. “They’d never heard of those sails. For some reason that sparked my interest. I knew the blooper was illegal under the IMS rule but I wasn’t sure about CHS. I checked the rules then went to the committee in England that controls CHS racing. They agreed it would be legal.”

Byrne told Millar of the breakthrough and the pair swiftly contacted North Sails in Sydney, stressing the need for total secrecy. North Sails management researched the project and found that their loft in South Africa still had designs for bloopers from 20 years ago. The sail was ordered from there and air freighted to Sydney just before the start. The blooper was a lightweight headsail that was attached to the bow and set outside the leech (trailing edge) of the mainsail when the yacht was sailing directly downwind under spinnaker. Their secret tests showed that speed increased from eight knots to 9.5. That could mean a gain of 18 very valuable miles over their rivals if it could be used effectively in the first 12 hours.

Don Mickleborough’s sloop
Southerly
, aka “The Floating Hotel”, was probably the least conspicuous race yacht on the CYC dock. Built in 1939, she was one of the
grand old ladies in the fleet. She boasted the oldest and most experienced crew with an average age of somewhere around 60 and between them over 100 Hobarts. Mickleborough had done 33 while Tony Cable topped the list with one more. The professionally presented sign swinging in the breeze on
Southerly
’s mast revealed this team’s attitude towards their younger rivals: “Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.”

Over the years Mickleborough had become a bit of a traditionalist. Being aboard the oldest yacht it was important that they saw “the youngsters” – that is everyone else – off. So two hours before the start, when most other crews were clambering aboard their yachts while families and friends stood on the dock to wave goodbye, the senior citizens from
Southerly
were still firmly ensconced in the bar enjoying perfectly poured beers. It was not until 12.15pm, 45 minutes before the start, when they were certain all others had departed, that they decided it was time to leave. They walked leisurely down the dock to the yacht, laughing and appearing casual and carefree. The dock lines were cast off and they motored the old girl out into the fray.

It seemed that just about anything that floated was out on the harbour that glorious Boxing Day morning; everything from large luxury vessels to ferries, yachts and powerboats and even canoes, surf skis and paddleboards carrying some of the more adventurous. Waterways authorities, water police and volunteer groups patrolled the boundaries of the course in small boats keeping watch over the no-go zone. At this stage their job was relatively easy, but once the post-start stampede towards the harbour entrance began they would be tested to their limits.

Sydney’s harbour is undoubtedly one of the world’s most beautiful. The modern and vibrant city sits superbly
on its southern shore some seven miles from the heads. The famous Opera House with its sail-like roof, and the gunmetal grey “coathanger” – the Harbour Bridge – recline like a proud guard of honour at the entrance to Circular Quay, the bay that is the city centre’s maritime doorway. The harbour takes the form of a magnificent natural amphitheatre and the surrounding hills are an appealing mix of bushy parkland and seaside suburbs dotted with a broad spectrum of homes. Ribbons of golden sand, backed by grassy covered picnic grounds, give the city folk, lovers of the outdoor life, excellent access to the water.

Thousands of moorings, marina berths and private docks are filled with every conceivable type of craft, from multi-million dollar mega yachts to the tiniest of “tinnies” – small aluminium dinghies. On Boxing Day the surrounding homes, hills and headlands are packed with people waiting eagerly to witness the spectacular start. It is estimated that more than 300,000 people watch the event live. On South Head, the rocky bastion that marks one side of the entrance to the port, the outside broadcast television unit from Network Ten was already on the air. Overhead, between 15 and 20 media helicopters were buzzing around like dragonflies.