Paul Cayar
Rob Weiland
Shining bright
To be honest I am not a fan of the Rolex Sydney Hobart start with its ‘safety last’ chaos and its whipped-up reporting, but I really like the final 50 miles of the race and how these and the arrival at Hobart are reported so intensely, almost as if it is a different sport. Not much better to put matters in perspective than a classic 600-mile race.
Since 2006 the Sydney Hobart Race has been won by either a
TP52 or a specialist IRC52 built from TP52 tooling six times out of 16 races. Quest in 2008, Balance (ex-Quest) in 2015, Ichi Ban in 2017, 2019 and 2021, and now Celestial in 2022. In these 16 races there were 17 podium places altogether for
TP52s/IRC52s (from TP52 moulds) for the IRC starts, so just over one per race. Three times the full podium was taken by the TP/IRC 52s, most recently in the latest race in which the final order was: first Celestial (ex-Audi 2011, Judel/Vrolijk design), owned by Sam Haynes; second Gweilo (Judel/Vrolijk) owned by Matt Donald and Chris Townsend; and in third the 2021 Botín-designed IRC52 Caro, owned by New Zealander Max Klink. Not too sure, but I think Caro is the first IRC52 from TP52 moulds
with the option to carry water ballast, allowing the team to reduce crew to about 10 and so sail nearly 500kg lighter when water ballast is not required, and the rest of the time at similar weight and righting moment as the full-crew TP52s. Further down, the TP52 that started life in 2004 as Bright Star
has, as Quest or Balance, so far been on the podium four times of the 10 Sydney Hobart races she completed. This year Quest finished fifth. Pipping her in fourth came the Judel/Vrolijk-designed Pac52 Warrior Won, and in sixth the TP52 Patrice (ex-Azzurra 2015, Botín Partners), now owned by Tony Kirby (NSW). This year for the first time out of the 109 entries the number of TP52s on the startline was over 10, actually 11 plus two IRC52s from TP52 moulds! To bring some perspective to this year’s results, for IRC 0 (Maxis)
and IRC 1 (TP52s) the race was predominantly downwind, while two days into the race the boats further back were met by a sub- stantial shift which turned a nice run into a hard beat. The only IRC2 boat to finish within the top 20, actually in seventh (after receiving redress for standing by the TP52 Koa which had suffered a broken
28 SEAHORSE
rudder), was the GP42 Enterprise Next Generation. Yet in an otherwise big-boat race the four Maxi 100-footers
finished 17th to 20th on corrected time; 17th Black Jack, 18th Law Connect, 19th Andoo Comanche and 20th Wild Oats XI, indicating that the conditions for these line-honour specials were not perfect for also winning on corrected time. Nor for record breaking: in 2017 Comanchecompleted the course
in 1d 9h 15m (this time 1d 11 h 57m) and the IRC52 Ichi Ban in 1d 19h 10m (in 2022 Caro was the fastest 52 in 1d 21h 49m). In fact, the best Maxi on corrected time was Sean Langman’s 69ft Reichel/Pugh pocket-maxi Moneypenny. That the race was predominantly downwind for the bigger boats
does not mean it was straightforward; playing the shifts well during the first day gave Comanche enough margin to sail to a relatively simple real-time win. The same conditions also saw a group of four of the 52s (Caro, Warrior Won, Celestial and Gweilo) split from the others to fight for the podium. With the breeze at times touching 40kt it certainly was no doddle, a Sydney Hobart to remember. Looking at the ORCi results for boats scored both in IRC and
ORCi, in ORCi it is Gweilo first and Quest second. Celestial would have won here too… but withdrew from ORCi after being made aware of having flown an ORC-illegal sail combination, flying a head- sail tacked in front of the headstay when a spinnaker is being flown. The corrected time difference between Gweilo and Quest is
relatively small in ORCi: the difference between Gweilo and Quest in IRC is 1 hour and 21 minutes and closer to 23 minutes in ORCi. Maybe I should try to figure out why by studying in detail the
various certificates, but for my five cents I am happy to guess that the difference is due to the relatively low righting moment of Quest. ORC claims its updated 2023 VPP will in a more scientific way
encourage designers away from artificially tender boats, by reassess- ing the ‘depowering of sails as wind speed rises’; so I wonder whether this will affect future results between TP52s? Rescoring the 2022 Hobart race for the 2023 VPP should tell us… However you look at it, the Sydney Hobart results are great
promotion for the TP52!! And, yes, I followed the race on the tracker at hourly intervals, when not sleeping… But it is not about the boats of course; foremost these
CARLO BORLENGHI/ROLEX
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