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but the first front isn’t really strong, it is the second front that now has punch, and this one wasn’t there in the previous model but has now become the major player in the race, and so everything revolves around that. So writing the script seven days out is absolutely inviting God to play with you… SH: How early do crews want to discuss sail selection? RB: About two weeks out from the start… they want to talk, but I don’t. It is really not until seven days out that you put some colour into the forecast, then five days out (which is still eight days until the race end) that you can really put some detail and flesh on the bone. But I’d say it is not until the night before or even the morning of the start that you have good confidence in how the race will pan out all the way! Ultimately this is all about the time you get to Storm Bay and the Derwent, and if the 50-footers arrive at the Iron Pot at 11pm… well, forget the handicap win. The best time to arrive at Tasman Lighthouse is about 10 or


11am, then get to the Iron Pot at lunchtime, then the breeze is great up the Derwent, taking two hours to do what it took a boat eight hours to do earlier on. All this means you can start the race knowing you are behind the eight ball if you know your time into the Derwent is late in the day. SH: What do you tell crews new to the race about the first night? RB: The good thing is it starts at 1pm and as it isn’t dark until 9pm you have eight hours of daylight, which gets you down past Jarvis Bay towards Montague Island in fast running conditions, and gives you time to settle the boat in daylight. If you are starting in strong southerly conditions it will be unpleasant after flapping around South Head, but you know it will improve as you come south. We have only had one race where it was southerly from start to finish, 1993, and the attrition rate was high… I always tell people to break the race into six-hour chunks, sailing


those chunks at 100 per cent efficiency to the polars and sailing the boat hot, plus satisfying your longterm objective. This means the navigator will say he wants us at point X tomorrow morning, but the strategist will want to sail hot in a certain way. So how do you reconcile those two scenarios? Well, there is no answer except a trade-off between the two, and that means knowing your boat and sail wardrobe extremely well. The good navigators don’t sleep, they nap and work the whole


time. They pay the money to get all the computer models they can and they don’t just run them once. The lazy navigator will run the scenario through the routeing software and go with that solution, but the good guys run it again and again and again – and that is what the overall forecasters do, running the program 40 or 50 times to see how stable the outcome is. So the good navigators get an envelope of a route so they are able to satisfy a short-term adjust- ment and be confident it still fits the overall plan. The other thing of course is on a TP52 you are still racing the guy


next door, and if you consider a move and he doesn’t someone has to decide to go or stick. If you are racing against Matt Allen with Will Oxley and Gordon Maguire onboard, then you’re loath to tack away. They don’t know anything you don’t know – but you think they do! For the first section of the race you are also watching the major


coastal stations that are reporting every 10 minutes. There are only a few, but you are watching them all the time. You also have current depending on where the warm eddies are and the strength of the east coast flow, so that is important in certain locations. SH: How good is the model you are using? RB:Well, they are bloody good compared to when I started working in weather 50 years ago – they weren’t even operational then, they were all just research models! So they are good but they are still not perfect and you still have to sail and race in reality. There are only a certain number of weather models, plus the free-to-access ones have limitations – one of which is not being that good on the SE coast where the race is! In terms of big winds, statistically we are not seeing the same


strength of fronts over Tasmania and Bass Strait that they had in the past. Between 1945 and ’65 they had a lot more frequent stronger fronts during the races than we have seen in the past


30 SEAHORSE


30 years, so we just don’t get the same frequency of strong fronts. But we are also talking about God and his dice… SH:What about those occasions when you go into Bass Strait, only to find it’s completely dead in there? RB:Wherever you are you are still engaged in the current six-hour plan, connected with how you want to play the Tasmanian coast… and that coast is really a place the Hobart fleet avoids for good reason. Anywhere north of Maria Island is often a nightmare at night and on many days with light winds; but if you are really smart and understand the weather you can use it – but very few do, as you have to have perfect timing to come in close, use it, then ease off- shore again. Not many people fancy that, however, as the rhumbline from Sydney to Tasman Light is quite a distance off Flinders Island… so even in cases where I can take them into the coast usually they don’t want to go! To be fair, in the past with less sophisticated models and more


guesswork, it was deemed foolhardy to shift off the rhumbline – if you take me 10 miles out of that corridor I will punch your lights out! The other thing you can get in Bass Strait is sea fog from water temperatures going from warm to cool, then the air running over that – and in 10, 15, even 25kt of breeze that is a major issue with visibility, particularly north of Flinders Island. The tuna fishermen used to look for it, an upwelling of warm water hitting the surface… SH: East coast of Tasmania? RB:You are offshore, and so how are you going to approach Tasman Light… you are thinking about that from Bass Strait. When you get towards Maria Island, what is the wind doing in Storm Bay? What time of the day will it be? Will you be able to lay Tasman Light from a long way out? If you understand what the breeze is doing there you try to do that in the most perfect manner from all the way back. SH:What can you do from Storm Bay and into the Derwent at night? RB: Well, it’s not always calm, but it is always a lot less than it is outside, and the worst times are often 3am-9am, when the breeze with the overnight cooling and surface inversion mean the winds shut off, but you do get westerly drainage that often extends a fair way out. There is usually a bit of tidal effect too down the bottom of the Derwent, and if there has been rain you can get fresh water running out of the Derwent itself. There are some standard rules about playing the eastern shore to start then going to the western shore, but the wind is more important than the rule, and you’re just obviously focusing on local pressure to see how you play either shore. Coming in after a light westerly, a southerly or SSE can carry you


in a sea breeze from lunchtime to 6 or 7pm – or even midnight, with max breeze being mid-late afternoon. Critically you always have to understand what is happening: is this a sea breeze? Is it a reinforced sea breeze, or normal sea breeze that will fade – and fade when? Where is the pressure best, when will it fail, and what will replace it? SH: Finally, I often hear the phrase ‘we are due a bad Hobart’, but every time you toss a coin it is still a one-off occurrence. RB: The penny doesn’t know about the last 10… the models are certainly not infallible, but rapid developments over the coming 48 hours are being missed much less now and, as navigators have to call in at Green Cape before crossing Bass Strait, they are talking to someone and can be advised of critical weather ahead of them, meaning the fleet are much more informed to make decisions now. SH: Brass tacks… how do people hire you? RB: They contact me in July and I start with them mid-December. I send something out every morning, this is how the race is looking, then I select one area they should be thinking about. If they read my notes and do their homework from day minus-15 to day zero they will be primed for the race. As we get closer to the start I do less of that and more focusing on what is actually going to happen. Typically I will be working with about half the Hobart fleet, and


so on the morning of the start they get a full set of notes electron- ically, then I print all that out and take them a hard copy plus a thumb-drive with everything on it. And of course a few of them will call me at midday from the harbour for an explanation of page 23 of my notes, and what do I mean by that… Blue Robinson


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