When you’re about to head into the teeth of a yacht race like the Sydney Hobart Race, it helps to have a sense of humor.
Asked how he sleeps on the eve of the race, Sam Haynes told The Athletic: “Like a baby… I wake up every couple of hours screaming.”
A wry sense of humor is an essential tool in a sport where you have to take whatever the weather throws at you. The weather on this annual 600-nautical-mile passage from Sydney to Hobart, the small capital city on the island of Tasmania, can be brutal.
The timing of the race can also be harsh, depending on how highly you rate Christmas Day. Given the fleet of 142 boats is scheduled to set out from Sydney Harbour at 1pm on Boxing Day, there is no such thing as a relaxing family Christmas for those taking part.
Contrary to his earlier quip, Haynes has taught himself to manage the pre-Boxing Day nerves. As a 14-time participant and two-time winner of the race, he has found a formula for success, although he acknowledged a good dose of luck is needed to win the trophy.
There are two titles up for grabs: the John H. Illingworth Challenge Trophy for Line Honours, for the boat that crosses the finish line first in Hobart; and the George Adams Tattersall Cup for the overall race winner, achieved by winning on International Rating Certificate (IRC) corrected time. IRC is a rating system, a mathematical formula that handicaps the bigger, faster boats against the smaller, slower boats.
Line Honours is most likely to go to one of the big 100-foot Maxi yachts entered in the race. This year there are five of these mighty beasts in the running, including last year’s Line Honours winner, LawConnect owned by Christian Beck. This time LawConnect will be counting a decorated Olympian on its crew roster. Ian Thorpe, the five-time swimming Olympic gold medalist known as the Thorpedo, is embarking on his first Hobart Race.
“I’ve spent my life in and around water, but this is a completely different test, both mentally and physically,” Thorpe told reporters. “I’m really excited, and I can’t wait to get out on the Harbour and down to Hobart.”
Swimming great Ian Thorpe (pictured left with his crew members) will be competing in this year’s race. (Saeed Khan / AFP via Getty Images)
While being first up Tasmania’s Derwent River and taking the winner’s gun off Hobart’s waterfront is the glamour victory, the Tattersall Cup is the more coveted trophy because this can potentially be won by any boat in the fleet.
Having won in 2022 for the first time on a 52-footer, last year Haynes chartered a powerful 70ft Volvo Open 70 and hired a mainly professional crew of international veterans — some of them round-the-world-race winners — to take overall victory. Not only that, but they dominated the opposition, setting a new record by finishing more than nine hours on corrected time ahead of the second-placed finisher.
Resounding victory though it was, Haynes and his crew were not in the mood for celebration. Their stunning performance had been overshadowed by two deaths on other boats, both caused by ‘crash gybes’, an accidental maneuver when the boom (the solid spar that spans the bottom edge of the sail) suddenly sweeps across the top of the cockpit at high speed. There had also been a man-overboard situation on another boat, although thankfully the crewman was swiftly located and successfully recovered by his teammates.
It was a devastating moment for the sailing community, but Haynes felt the loss of those sailors more keenly than most. Not only as a fellow competitor but as the commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, which has organized the Sydney Hobart Race since the first edition in 1945.
“It was extremely sad to have those tragic losses last year in the race and it really was a difficult time for a lot of people,” he told The Athletic. “Your heart goes out to their families, and it’s on our minds again at this time of year during the festive Christmas season. And of course we’ve just been marred by a very tragic event in Sydney,” he said, referring to the terror attack on Bondi Beach where at least 15 people were killed at a Jewish celebration in Sydney.
“It’s a lot of turmoil for those families, and this year’s race will be a sad anniversary for the loss of their loved ones. When we arrived in Hobart last year it was very somber. This is a race of danger and we know that yachting can be like that. These were experienced sailors who tragically lost their lives in an accident. Similar circumstances occurred on other boats in the fleet, but did not end up with the same catastrophic result.”
In the wake of last year’s race there has been a tightening of some of the safety regulations, as well as a process of education to minimize the recurrence of high-risk incidents like crash gybes or man overboard situations.
Ever since the so-called ‘Fatal Storm’ of 1998, when six sailors were lost to 80-knot hurricane-force winds and waves that reached as high as 100 feet in the exposed Bass Strait, the channel which separates Tasmania from mainland Australia, race organizers have put safety high up the agenda. But however they try to mitigate against the worst dangers, there’s no getting away from the fact that offshore yacht racing is going to come with risks.
Larry Ellison, the Oracle software tycoon and multibillionaire, used to be a keen offshore racer, leading his maxi yacht Sayonara to Line Honors victories in 1995 and in the fateful 1998 race. Having narrowly escaped that near-death experience in the Bass Strait, Ellison turned his back on offshore competition and focused his competitive energies instead on winning the America’s Cup, an event that takes place well within sight of land, and more recently on the made-for-TV SailGP championship, in partnership with Sir Russell Coutts.
If Ellison was once bitten, twice shy, what keeps a sailor like Haynes coming back for more? “You do have to be kind of slightly crazy to keep doing it,” he said. “It’s not like any other sailing that we do during the year, and the amount of preparation that goes into it, it’s such a big deal to make sure you can handle everything that might happen, because you know you’re going to have to deal with some big weather conditions.
“But the camaraderie side of things with your crew and the sense of achievement that you experience as a crew together, that definitely draws me back.
“And you get such a warm welcome when you get down to Hobart. You get an incredible sense of achievement in a way that you don’t really get that from any other races that we do.”
