Ragamuffin pips Rambler 88 in the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race
by Di Pearson, RSHYR media 29 Dec 2015 07:25 GMT
27 December 2015
Ragamuffin's trials on way to line honours second
A match race up the River Derwent from the Tasman Light and a heart-stopping decision not to follow Rambler when she gybed in the final stages of the race, resulted in second over line for 88 year-old Syd Fischer and his Ragamuffin 100.
Those events were put into perspective when sailing master/skipper David Witt re-told the real story of their trials on the first night and second days at sea.
Witt told how on the first night in the Rolex Sydney Hobart, things went horribly wrong for Team Ragamuffin.
"It was 10 to 10.30 at night when the southerly hit. It was intense and relentless. We were trying to get the main down heading north when the boat literally capsized on top of us. Shave (Justin Shave) was on the bow and under water, the main, half down, knocked me off the back of the boat. I was hanging on to the back end and my sea boots were dragged off me.
"All I was thinking was, 'can someone press the canting button (to centralise the keel), cos I can't reach it from where I am'.
"We were under water for 15 minutes – the ballast was on the wrong side of the boat and so was the keel. Frightening doesn't describe it," Witt recalled.
Then there was a game of dodgem cars with two 25-foot whales, on a collision course with the boat.
"We had to swerve and dodge them – that was nearly catastrophic," said crew member Andrew 'Crowebar' Crowe.
Losing all their electronics did not help, Crowebar apologizing for the lack of contact with the media on Day 2.
A broken port daggerboard was the dizzy limit, slowing the boat right down right when they had good contact with the lead boats.
"But we dusted ourselves off and kept going," Witt said.
And let's not forget a long stretch where sailing briskly at 25 knots became a distant dream when they were almost becalmed most of yesterday afternoon.
Then came the match race up the Derwent. At the last, Witt had to decide whether to follow Rambler, when tactician Brad Butterworth took the American boat towards shore looking for pressure.
"Did I feel the pressure of having to make that call – of course I did. I had Syd and the rest of the crew depending on a right decision. Lucky it was," Witt said, adding they had overtaken George David's Rambler once up the Derwent and then just before the finish.
"That's the toughest one we've had for a few years – but it was worth it in the end. It was good to beat Rambler over the line. The crew did a great job – every one of them did the job they had to do."
The last words go to Ragamuffin's owner, Syd Fischer, the oldest person to ever contest the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia's 628-nautical mile race.
"I don't have to do much anymore – I sit back and let the guys do it. Witty does a good job of helming and skippering the boat. It's a good crew – all of them," he said.
On their winning move, Fischer said: "We just had to try different tactics. We just had to do something different, and do it better – and we did.
"It was good to beat them – a good feeling. And I crossed another one off – my 47th," he said with his trademark grin.
Nic Douglass, the Sailor Girl caught up with Rags & Rambler following their battle up the Derwent to take second and third on line honours earlier today (within four minutes of each other), and also Wild Oats XI on their reasons for retiring.
David Witt, from Team Ragamuffin spoke to the Sailor Girl about the team's first day and pushing the leaders, then the damage front, their damage and finally, taking second place from Rambler.
Steve Quigley, of Wild Oats XI was dockside to congratulate the Rags team, and as much as he didn't want to, he spoke to Nic about the experience of being in Hobart, having arrived via plane, and just what went wrong.
Last but not least, the Sailor Girl chats to George David about the race, about the damage to the boat (pics on Facebook), and also about whether the team will head back 'Downunder'.
More adventures at www.AdventuresofaSailorGirl.com or on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.
A snapshot of Fischer's Sydney Hobart highlights:
- 1962 Malohi (Lion 35) - 5th overall from 42 starters – his first Hobart
- 1968 Ragamuffin 48ft - 3rd overall from 64
- 1970 Ragamuffin - 2nd overall from 61
- 1976 Ragamuffin German Frers 37' 5" - 3rd overall from 85
- 1977 Ragamuffin - 2nd overall - 131, 72 finished
- 1985 Ragamuffin - 3rd line/111th overall from 180
- 1987 Gazebo (this is 6th Rags renamed) - 2nd line/3rd overall from 154
- 1988 Ragamuffin - Line honours – from 119
- 1989 Ragamuffin - 2nd line/61st overall from 170
- 1990 Ragamuffin - Line honours – from 105
- 1992 Ragamuffin - (7th) Farr 50 Won overall – from 110
- 1997 Ragamuffin - 2nd overall from 114
- 1998 Ragamuffin - 3rd overall from 115, 44 finished
- 2001 Ragamuffin - 3rd overall from 75
- 2007 Ragamuffin - (10th) Bruce Farr TP52 2nd overall from 82
- 2011 Ragamuffin - 3rd overall from 88
- 2012 Ragamuffin-Loyal - (11th) Elliott 100ft 2nd on line – 6th overall from 76
- 2013 Ragamuffin 100 Elliott 100ft - 3rd on line - 52nd overall from 76
- 2014 Ragamuffin 100 - (12th) Andy Dovell 100ft 3rd on line – 81st overall from 117
- 2015 Ragamuffin 100 - 2nd on line
Luck is a fortune (by Jim Gale, RSHYR media)
American George David brought his 88 foot Rambler from the other side of the world to win the Rolex Sydney Hobart - not line honours - he wanted to win outright and made it clear in Sydney when he spoke to the press at the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia before the race, and he made it just as plain when he stepped off Rambler in Hobart.
"This is a handicap race," George David said. "There are a hundred boats out there and every boat is trying to win handicap. That's where the competition is.
"Line honours is a nice thing to have. We could put some things on the boat to make her go faster, but they would hurt our rating."
For a time yesterday, after the damage to Comanche, it looked like Rambler might just pull off the double. She had raced ahead of the stricken super maxi, and had created a huge gap between herself and third placed Ragamuffin 100. Line honours beckoned.
And on the overall leaderboard she had been steadily climbing the ladder. She had reached second place when it all fell apart.
Rambler was about to experience that special agony that the fickle winds off Tasmania's coast have reserved for so many race leaders over the years.
"We sailed a great race," David said. "We got through all the bad stuff with effectively no damage. We did damage to both daggerboards when we hit a couple of fish, but the boat held together and everything was great until the blower shut down."
Rambler had run out of wind.
"Yesterday was bizarre," David continued. "We had no air. The big high swallowed up the guys behind us then it got us too. And once you're in it you can't get out."
Comanche had chosen to give Tasmania a wider birth, arcing much further out to sea. She didn't have a lot of wind out there, but she had wind, and took back the lead while Rambler drifted.
"To add insult to injury, all the boats behind us came down with a northerly and sailed right into us," David said. "At one point we were 60 miles ahead of Ragamuffin 100."
The rest is history.
Comanche spluttered and surged her way up the Derwent in dying light, squeezing every drop she could from the fading breeze. Rambler and Ragamuffin 100 reached Tasman Island after Storm Bay and the Derwent River had shut down. On board Rambler a frustrating afternoon would stretch into a long, frustrating night, the two boats parked within metres of each other.
As the night wore on David watched his chances of an outright triumph evaporate.
"I knew we had lost after we had been in the hole for four or five hours," David said.
"Ten miles further ahead and we probably would have staggered into Hobart last night," said Rambler's tactician Brad Butterworth, "but we just dropped out of the breeze. So that was really the race for us."
"But that's why you come sailing," David chipped in. "You have good days and bad days where things just go against you.
"There is an element of luck in everything you do. The wind does what the wind does."
In the end Rambler and Ragamuffin 100 staged an extra-ordinary, snail-paced duel up an almost breathless Derwent River this morning, with the Australian super maxi falling across the line just ahead of the American maxi.
It was gripping, but also painful to watch.
Yet after all this, George David didn't miss a beat when asked if he would bring Rambler back for another shot.
"Yes. Why not. Sounds good to me."
Soldini sails a classic Hobart race, for better, for worse (by Bruce Montgomery, RSHYR media)
If you are looking for a lesson in how to sail a Sydney-Hobart race - what to do, what not to do - look no further than the Italian maestro Giovanni Soldini, skipper of Volvo 70 Maserati. Just forget about his start.
Soldini sailed into fourth place in Hobart today, having spent seven hours "in the doldrums" yesterday, light airs that rob well-found vessels like his of momentum. Ahead of him were the super maxi greyhounds with their big Code Zero running headsails that can convert four knots of wind to eight knots of boat speed.
Soldini's crew included Pierre Casiraghi, grandson of Princess Grace of Monaco, son of Caroline Princess of Hanover and the late Stefano Casiraghi. An accomplished sailor himself, Casiraghi was very comfortable sailing with Italy's most famous mariner, Soldini, a multi-winner of single-handed round-the-world races. Perhaps most famously, he was the man who plucked French navigatrice Isabelle Autissier from the Southern Ocean 1900 nm west of Cape Horn in the 1998/99 Around Alone Race, which he won.
In this latest race, for which he sailed Maserati from Italy, Soldini cleaned up three buoys at the start and the crew were forced overboard to clean up the tangle. Then he set course and went well out to sea, alone.
"I think we played very well with the cold front," he said.
"There were no problems; we didn't break anything. I think it was a good idea to go east because the wind was turning south, south-east so we had a good position. It was not a good idea to go upwind very tight.
"So we just sailed all the time at 15-16 knots and 60 degrees from the wind. We did the same on the other tack. Then the high pressure came and that was a disaster. We don't have a Code Zero on this boat. When the wind is very light...we are just stuck there. It is a disaster. We were stuck in the light air for too many hours."
Casiraghi was ecstatic about the race, run by the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia.
"It was a fantastic race, it really lived up to the reputation," he said. "Maserati's a really steady, strong boat in heavy weather.
"I would love to do it again. We'll see next year or the year after. It's important to have the right boat and the right crew."
Meanwhile, Soldini is not sure that he will be allowed back to campaign in the Volvo 70 next year.
"I would love to come back but it is a long way from Europe, that's the problem. It's a lot of organisation. We sailed the boat from Italy to here. It is a long campaign.
"But it is not every year, you know, otherwise, my wife, she kill me," he said and all the Italians on the dock fell about laughing with him.
A 628 mile match race (by Jim Gale, RSHYR media)
"While the super maxis were fighting it out for line honours, a few miles astern an absorbing match race was played out by the two grand prix sixty footers, Matt Allen's Carkeek60 Ichi ban and Rupert Henry's JV62 Chinese Whisper.
Allen and Henry are good friends and rivals at their home club, the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, and the duel pretty much kicked off as the two yachts battled their way through the race-start spectator fleet at the Heads. It was finally resolved off Hobart's Constitution Dock about 1:15 this afternoon when Chinese Whisper slipped across the line 11 minutes ahead of Ichi Ban.
"There was hardly a time in the whole race when we couldn't see them," Allen said.
"A 600-mile match race. Fantastic fun," said Henry. "We knew it would be on. They're similar boats with similar speeds."
"We didn't plan it, we sailed our own race," Allen said, "but they have that extra waterline length and a slight ratings advantage over us so we always knew they were going to keep track of us. They did that the whole race, even tacking up the Derwent River. We tacked, they tacked."
Ichi Ban is configured for downwind and reaching, and pulled away from Chinese Whisper in the opening hours of the race, but when the southerly cracked in, the advantage turned to Chinese Whisper and it pretty much remained an upwind race the rest of the way.
Both boats came through the tough first night unscathed, though Ichi Ban lost her wind instruments, doing without them for half the race until it calmed down enough to send someone up the mast to cobble things back together.
"We didn't back off," Allen said, "we kept the hammer down all the time. We managed the boat over the waves, and had a number 5 headsail and two reefs in the main.
"It wasn't pleasant. At one stage we had driving rain – it felt like your skin was getting a dermabrasion. We had a youngster on the helm while the rest of us were below, hoping we weren't going to get tapped to have a drive until it was over."
"The front hit us really quickly," Henry said. "We were running in 20 knots and all of a sudden we were going upwind in 45 knots. The transition took less than five minutes.
"These were the most testing conditions since we got Chinese Whisper and she's solid."
And then it turned light.
"Yesterday was very frustrating," Henry continued. "We flopped around for a couple of hours, which wasted a lot of the work we had done."
Testing conditions but an interesting race, was how Henry summed it up.
"It wasn't nearly as tough a race as 2004," Allen said. "That was a lot windier and wetter. We went to storm jibs a number of times that year. But this was certainly a long race.
"We thought we were at sea approximately enough, as some people would say."
More Adventures of a Sailor Girl interviews
Dockside chats with Liz Wardley from Maserati, Rupert Henry from Chinese Whisper and Sophie Ciszeck and Matt Allen from Ichi Ban (4th, 5th and 6th on line honours).
Great to chat about the conditions, the ups and downs, everything in between and what might be coming up next.
Make sure you follow the Magenta Project, the next all-female Volvo project, AND also check out SOLAS if you are looking for a charity to donate to - help make our Australian coastline safer for all.
For more adventures, head to www.AdventuresofaSailorGirl.com.
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