Big bosat racing on a modest budget

• NEWS
• 23 Dec, 2002 04:57:00 PM

Big bosat racing on a modest budget

Retired Sydney businessman Ian Treleaven always liked the idea of campaigning a big yacht in ocean races

Retired Sydney businessman Ian Treleaven always liked the idea of campaigning a big yacht in ocean races. 

Unfortunately he says he doesn’t really have the spare millions it takes today to be competitive in the maxi class dominated by boats like the 97 foot Canon, Neville Crichton’s 90 footer Alfa Romeo and the Swedish global flyer Nicorette. 

He found the answer in the Volvo 60’ class, the water ballasted flyers designed for round the world racing, and in particular in Merit, built for New Zealander Grant Dalton as a spare for his 1997 Whitbread campaign.

Now Treleaven is having a ball.  On board these boats look like nothing so much as a giant skiff, and they sail like that too.

These boats are fast.

Treleaven reckons the fastest he has ever got Merit going is a phenomenal 25 knots.  He says the boat regularly exceeds 20 knots, and in this years Gosford to Lord Howe race they smashed the record, covering the 410 miles in just 33 hours.   Even though Merit is giving away more than 30 waterline feet to the big maxis, Treleaven believes that if they get the right conditions they could make Hobart before anyone else.  “We want some good hard wind from the south,” he says.

Merit has two great advantages to windward.  Her water ballast and the strength the boat.  The Volvo 60’s were designed to be raced hard under any and every conditions, so they can be pressed when others are looking at sailing more conservatively.

Treleaven has put together a very experienced crew around Merit.  His crew boss is Greg (Vengeance) Johnston, a veteran of 19 Hobarts and four America’s Cup campaigns, while all up Merit’s crew boasts more than 70 trips south.

“My skills are in management,” says Treleaven, who used to run his own international sports clothing business.  “A big boat campaign is just like managing a business.  Winning takes a team; you need good people in every position.

“And there’s great camaraderie.  The Hobart is the toughest race in the world.  I’ve sailed all my life.  I’ve done all the other major ocean races: the transAtlantic, Bermuda.  The Hobart is physically tough but its also the most tactical race because you’ve got the race down the NSW coast, then the race across Bass Strait, and then another race off Tasmania and up the Derwent River.

“People who do well in the Hobart are those that finish. We are very big on safety.

“And you have to be fit to sail these boats.  I have lost 10 kilos since I bought Merit."