Sydney Hobart Goes to the Little Guys

The largest-ever collection of custom, 100-ft maxis were no match for three Australia-based, 40-ft production boats in the ’09 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race. Andy Saies’ Beneteau First 40 Two True beat out another First 40, Mike Welsh’s Wicked, and Ian Mason’s Sydney 38 Next, to win overall honors in the 100-boat fleet.

"The wind was in, the wind was out, we drifted, we went backwards, we lost internet access, we didn’t know what was going on until the last few minutes," Saies said. "It was a classic Rolex Sydney Hobart event and we were in it up to our back teeth, and it came our way in the end. We may be privileged enough to have a boat and a team that gets to this position as people have in the past. But in yacht racing to have everything going right in one event at the right time is probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

The variability Saies referred to — the fleet saw everything from 30-knot southwesterlies to near-calms — meant that the leaderboard was shuffled around many times. The top-performing big boat was Skype founder Nikolas Zennstrom’s Judel/Vrolijk 72 Ran, and the bevy of Maxis was led by TransPac monohull record-holder Neville Crichton’s Alfa Romeo — the first to reach Hobart after 628 miles of racing.

We’ll have a full recap in the February issue of Latitude 38.