We Came, We Saw But Did Not Conquer

• NEWS
• 29 Dec, 2003 03:49:00 PM

We Came, We Saw But Did Not Conquer

“Our predictions for this race were very different from what we experienced. We’d studied the weather of the last ten years of the Hobart, we charted it, plotted it, set the boat up for the average of the ten years, but there is no average weather.”

For American skipper Skip Sheldon the Rolex Sydney Hobart was one of those challenges he had to do once in a life that has included success in most of the ocean classics of the northern hemisphere.  Now that his 65- foot cruiser racer Zaraffa is tied up in Hobart he can reflect on just how big a challenge it turned out to be.

“It was tough,” he said as he stepped off the boat.  “The seas were very confused which leaves the skipper confused from time to time.

“This is only the second time in fifty years of sailing that I have been seasick.”

Sheldon didn’t come to Australia just to compete in the Rolex Sydney Hobart, he came here to win it, as part of a four year campaign that with Zaraffa that has included  divisional wins in the Rolex Fastnet and Trans Atlantic races.  He put together a crew that included Americas Cup and Volvo Around the World sailors, and sailed to Hobart with legendary local meteorologist Neil Batt to guide him.  Yet in the end it was the unpredictability of the weather that astounded him.

“It’s curious to me how unpredictable and how rapidly the weather changes,” Sheldon said.  “Our predictions for this race were very different from what we experienced.  We’d studied the weather of the last ten years of the Hobart, we charted it, plotted it, set the boat up for the average of the ten years, but there is no average weather.”

Sheldon said that the fascinating challenge of the Rolex Sydney Hobart is that, for the whole race, one side of the course is blocked off, first by the NSW coast, then Bass Strait and then Tasmania.  It is something that he has never encountered before and it cuts down the options available to skippers.  “So its puzzling.  Very challenging.  Strategically, when we review the race, there will be very little we could have done differently given our knowledge of the meteorology of the time.”

The race was not without incidents.  Like Skandia and Grundig AAPT Zaraffa hit a sunfish on the way down, stopping the boat dead in the water for six minutes.  The yacht sustained no damage though.

Sadly the sheer expense of coming down to Australia with a genuinely competitive boat makes it unlikely that Sheldon will be back for a second attempt to master the race.

“I’ve been a delinquent dad for three years,” he says.  “When I get back home I will take my daughter fishing.”