Many of those returning from the conflict of 1939-1945 were soon pursuing new activities where they could find some small element of the excitement (and dangers) of wartime service. So began modern – and for many years extraordinarily dangerous – motor racing, as did the idea to race small yachts for long distances, two-handed and later solo

We all knew that the design would excel to windward, but the downwind in gusts of 30 was going to test our experience. Should we leave the kite in the bag? When the foredeck crew decided to bring the kite on deck “just in case”, we knew we were going to fly it.

Well, Mr Know-it-all, here you are on a very skinny foredeck belonging to 'Athena', a gorgeous racing 8-Metre yacht, owned by a Peer of the Realm, Lord Jonathan of Cork, who has assumed from your Australian accent that you are the very bee's-knee's of foredeck hands, (despite being the oldest person on the boat), and miracles of calm efficiency are expected ! Oh, and did I mention I am nursing a shoulder cuff injury from a previous attempt at biting off more than I could chew.

A week after Australia announced its first serious tilt at the America’s Cup in 25 years, it seems a little curmudgeonly to be getting stuck in. But let’s not let the romance of a 43 year old victory divert us from the facts. The racing is boring to watch. It’s unrelatable for the weekend sailor. It’s commercially motivated

The boats they race in are thirty-five-year-old Catalina 37s. Weighing in at around 7 tonnes, with dacron sails and symmetrical kites. They have a maximum speed of around 7 knots. The event is living proof that excitement in sailboat racing comes from tactics, personality and crew work, not speed and technology.

That said, observing the race from 10,000 nautical miles away does give a degree of objectivity, that is sometimes lost in the hurly burly of holiday time Australian sports coverage. So I’ll take the plunge and give you (in no particular order) half a dozen of my personal take aways from the 2025 Sydney Hobart Yacht Race…  and yes, of course its all seen through the distorted lens of traditional sailing values!

A quick calculation shows that just over four percent of the fleet are of some sort of wooden construction.

Well, its on again this year, on Friday 31st of October with four local boats being offered to visitors to compete against a Port Phillip crew. There will be a slight change in 2025 with Melbourne owners being aboard their yachts during the racing rather than watching (heart in mouth) from the comfort of the MARGARET PEARL as per last year.

“It was when she neatly sailed off her anchor the first morning of the racing, completed her first race and dropped her anchor under-sail again that the trouble began. A complaint was put to the race committee that all these manoeuvres could not possibly be carried out on a boat this size with a crew of three, safely! This, despite the fact that all the manoeuvres had gone without a hitch. The committee did not say who had complained , but it obviously upset Hugh and his young crew. Might be why I found myself learning Coral’s ropes as the fourth crew member the very next day. “

“We gybed at Bembridge and pushed hard as we didn’t know what we would face at Ventnor and St Catherine’s.  We debated whether to go high and hope for breeze under the cliffs or to take the rum line.  In the end, we stayed inshore and it paid off.  There was less breeze, but we wriggled through before the big wind hole came in.”

In no other sport has there been such a diversity of approaches to the fundamental requirement that we should compete under conditions that offer everyone a fair chance of winning. Yet in no other sport have these various attempts so convincingly failed to satisfy the participants

The proposition that a measurement-based regime would encourage owners to better maintain or upgrade their yachts is illogical. Any classic yacht that races regularly will already be adequately maintained. Upgrades would add to a handicap, which is hardly encouraging. Inevitably, this would soon lead to the rise of an optimisation scramble lead by the professional "rating whisperers" who have become such a blight on IRC racing.

Walking around below decks and seeing the names on the bunks and the pots in the galley and the nav station where Mike Quilter sat for days on end, makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

The AWBF has just released a recording of the panel discussion between a gang of Derwent Class sailors and SWS’s co-editor Sal Balharrie at the recent festival. It’s not your standard symposium fare!

The outcome of both day one races saw the long time champion, YVONNE, continue her progress through the record books of the Tumlaren Victoria State Titles. With around 30 Sydney-Hobarts, an America’s Cup Campaign and a Whitbread Race between them, the helm (Dave Allen) and main sheet hand (Aaron Cole) were always going to be hard to beat!

Victorian Tumlaren State Championships, 2025. Day One.

During the race a boat’s location must be determined by traditional star, sun, planet or moon sights. Navigators of boats competing using celestial navigation must at a minimum maintain, and have ready for inspection in Bermuda, the paper-based plotting sheets for the entire race which demonstrate the method of obtaining the vessel’s position at any time during the race. All fixes resulting from Lines of Position shall have recorded the GMT, altitude, azimuth and intercept of the body or bodies of each LOP. Any Local Apparent Noon fixes shall have GMT and altitude data recorded and available for inspection.

While this was going on Barry, who was navigator, said that ‘he was not feeling too well and would go and have a lie down’. When we did get sailing again Alan called down to Barry to give us a course but received no reply. Steve Kingsland went below, to discover that Barry had died during the half hour it had taken us to get sailing.

While no pre-WW2 yachts are entered, there are many examples of yacht genres from the second half of the 20th century, that have helped the Fastnet become the world’s largest offshore yacht race. 

This class is only permitted to carry the smallest model of electric autopilot, and it is not adequate when the boats are being pushed hard downwind.  This was a deliberate decision by Don McIntyre, race founder, to keep the boats simple and affordable