Maybe he's not plum crazy after all!

• NEWS
• 23 Dec, 2002 07:12:00 PM

Maybe he's not plum crazy after all!

For the 13th time in his life Sydney maths teacher Chris Bowling is sailing to Hobart on the smallest boat in the fleet in the annual Rolex Sydney Hobart yacht race. For the past two years he has been awarded the Plum Crazy Trophy for being the first boat under 9.5m LOA to finish the 630-mile race.

For the 13^th time in his life Sydney maths teacher Chris Bowling is sailing to Hobart on the smallest boat in the fleet in the annual Rolex Sydney Hobart yacht race.  For the past two years he has been awarded the Plum Crazy Trophy for being the first boat under 9.5m LOA to finish the 630-mile race.

Bowling’s Hick 31, Red Rock Communication, measures in at the absolute legal minimum for the race, 9 meters.  The other Hick 31 in the race, ToeCutter, a newer version sailed by its designer, Robert Hicks, is a foot longer on the waterline. That makes ToeCutter a faster boat, but it guarantees that Red Rock will always be the smallest boat in the fleet, and that is important for the wily Bowling; “It’s good for sponsorship.  It means we’ll always get some coverage.  But the main reason for the small boat is that it’s all I can afford.”

That pretty much sums up Bowling’s approach to ocean racing.  He’s not so much plum crazy as canny and, in his own words; “I refuse to be thrown out of the sport by poverty.”

In a race dominated by elite multi million dollar campaigns like Alfa Romeo, Nicorette and Canon, Bowling represents the other side of the Rolex Sydney Hobart: dedicated club racers who saddle up each year for the icon of Australian yachting.

He doesn’t really expect to win the race, though he won his division in 1994 and 1996.  For a small boat to win outright, though, you would need a very slow race that suddenly turned fast once the big boats were already tied up in Hobart.  A one in thirteen or fourteen-year race.  But that’s not the point.  “The attraction of the Hobart is the adventure,” Bowling says.  “The appeal of weekend racing is the competition but the Sydney Hobart is all about adventure.”

And he doesn’t accept that you have got to be a little bit loony to go across Bass Strait in such a small boat.  Sure Red Rock is less comfortable than Alfa Romeo, but when a maxi falls off a wave she falls at higher speeds and further. “The bigger they are the harder they fall.  Because the forces are so much less on a small boat there are a lot less personal injuries.  It’s a bit bouncier and cramped but safer in a little boat.”

Bowling remembers the horrific conditions of 1998 only too well, but his most memorable race was in 1986.  It was his first Hobart as skipper, on a little timber boat called Madman’s Woodyard.  They lost their mast in Bass Strait but still made it to the finish line under jury rig.