The 90-foot Nicorette, the sole surviving super-maxi in the gale-decimated fleet of the 60th anniversary Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, has taken Line Honors, giving owner/ skipper Ludde Ingvall his second victory in four years. Nicorette crossed the finish line off Hobart's Castray Esplanade at 5.10.44 am on a chilly and wet morning, sailing up the Derwent River under spinnaker in an 8 knot southerly breeze. Her elapsed time for the race of about 2 days 16 hours 00 minutes 44 seconds is more than 21 hours outside Nokia's record of 1 day 19 hours 48 minutes 02 seconds set in 1999. Pausing only to re-provision, Nicorette turned right around is now sailing north again, aiming for line honors in the 24th Strathfield Pittwater Coffs Race which starts on January 2.
Of the 116 entries, 53 skippers have now confirmed their retirement to the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia.
The stricken super-maxi, Skandia, lost her massive keel and capsized in the Tasman Sea late today as skipper Grant Wharington and his crew flew into Hobart after taking to liferafts earlier in the day. Skandia tonight is floating upside down, some 80 nautical miles offshore. A tug is on its way in an attempt to salvage the 98-footer which is wallowing in huge seas east of Flinders, off the north-east coast of the island state of Tasmania. It is not known if her towering mast has broken.
Link to RolexSydneyHobart Site
Link to Sydney-Hobart Commentary
"We were going so well," Wharington said. "We were sailing conservatively on port tack heading inshore where there would be calmer water conditions when we landed off a large rogue wave. At the time we were sailing under No 4 jib and two reefs in the main…very comfortable with the situation." The impact bent both hydraulic rams controlling the big canting keel, which came loose and swung to one side, laying the boat on its side. The crew was able to stabilize the keel for a time and began motoring downwind. However, the keel came loose again and began chopping through the hull of the boat.
With a police launch fast approaching, and afraid that the keel could fall off the yacht, capsizing it, at 8:00 am the 16 members of the crew
transferred to liferafts, and were taken aboard the police launch Van
Diemen about a half hour later.
Wharington said that he would not know why the keel had failed until the boat is retrieved and the broken hydraulics can be examined. However he still believes in the new canting keel technology. "We are effectively like test pilots rolling around in formula one racing cars, and I am still a bit baffled as to what actually happened. We are lucky to get out of this alive and sail another yacht race," he added. - Peter Campbell
FALLING OFF A TEN METER WAVE
(Stewart Thwaites, the owner/skipper of the New Zealand super-maxi Konica Minolta describes the circumstances leading to their retirement for the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race.)
"We had a relatively hard night (in gale force winds and big seas) but
nothing we couldn't handle. But we launched off a ten meter wave with no back," Thwaites explained. "The bow felt like it was facing the sky and a good proportion of the keel was out of the water," Konica Minolta's principal helmsman and America's Cup sailor, Gavin Brady added. "There was that lonely five seconds while we waited to fall. You hope for a soft landing but…"
When the twenty-seven ton yacht smashed down into the bottom of the wave's trough "we heard a crack but we were not sure what it was," Thwaites said. "It was an all hands on deck situation." They found that the cabin top had creased between the mast and the sleave of her enormous canting keel, where there are intense structural pressures on the boat. For an hour the crew attempted to slow down the yacht as they braced the damaged area, but with the boat head on to the big swell and the back and forth motion bending the hull, Thwaites and Brady decided that if they continued sailing there was a real possibility the keel could fall off the boat. The sails were lowered and they motored towards the Tasmanian coast. Their race was over. "It was
a hard decision," Thwaites said.
Ironically the damage occurred just five miles from relative security.
Brady explained that during the night, after a day of playing cat and mouse with the Melbourne supermaxi Skandia, Konica Minolta took a gamble and sailed very aggressively during the dark, stormy hours. "Normally at that stage of the race you would have everybody below resting but we kept everyone on deck." The tactic allowed them to open a substantial lead and this morning, with Skandia forced to retire and no other boat close enough to threaten their lead, they decided to head toward more settled waters close to the coast. "We were only five miles from smooth water when the boat broke," Brady said. - Peter Campbell
"Every year I say it's my last one, but probably I'll be back." – Stewart Thwaites, Konica Minolta
"I'll be back. This is a great race, isn't it?" - Grant Wharington, Skandia
"It may be to their benefit that Nicorette is so new, because the guys didn't know how hard to push the boat, so they were not going as hard as the others. That may be what has saved them." - Alex Simonis, co-designer of Nicorette
