Ten Years On – Victorian and Tassie Boats Go For The Double

• NEWS
• 18 Dec, 2003 03:15:00 PM

Ten Years On – Victorian and Tassie Boats Go For The Double

1993 was also a special year for the Lyons 41 Cuckoos Nest, sailing this year as Interum, as she took out overall honours.

Within the sailing community the 1993 Sydney Hobart Yacht Race has a special reputation.

For three days the winds and seas off the New South Wales south coast and across Bass Strait were relentless.  It just didn’t let up, as one after the other boats and crew gave up and limped back into Eden to try to patch up broken gear and broken hearts.  Some sailors say it was worse than 1998 because the horrific conditions just went on and on.

Just getting to Hobart was an achievement, but a sky blue 47-footer named Ninety Seven did more than that.  She led the fleet across the line, becoming the smallest boat to take line honours in more than four decades.  It was something special.

It was a special year for the Lyons 41 Cuckoos Nest, too.  She finished second over the line, and close enough to Ninety Seven to overhaul her on handicap.

Now, ten years later, both boats will be back together on the starting line to reprise that epic race.

Ninety Seven has been renamed, Dysons Cobb & Co, but she is closer to her original racing condition than at any time since 1993, while Cuckoos Nest, now called Interum, too, will revisit Sydney in showroom condition.

Owner Chris Dare, a former dinghy champion from Melbourne, says that when he bought Ninety Seven last year he found that constant changes to the rules had produced a lot of changes to the boat.

“However we thought she was a darned good boat originally and we wanted to get her back to that.  It also happens to suit her as far as IMS rating is concerned.”

With a new carbon fibre mast, boom and rudder, new sails and a complete makeover below, Dare is delighted with how the boat is performing.  In this year’s Sydney Gold Coast Race she led the fleet in the heavy conditions of the first night.

Adam Brown, 33, who will be principle helmsman in this year’s Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race crewed on Ninety Seven in 1993 as did Darren Senogles, the second member of the original crew who is sailing on the boat this year. 

Adam says that with the changes to the boat over the last 18 months she is much stiffer and definitely faster downwind.  “She has never been a round-the-cans sort of boat.  She was built for ocean races like the Hobart.”

He doesn’t remember too much about the ‘93 Race except that it was “wet and cold and miserable.  It kept going on and on.”

In 1998 Brown found himself back in the thick of it again, but this time on Sword of Orion, when he had to be winched to safety by helicopter from the stricken yacht. 

The following year he was back on the new Orion.  “I was determined to make sure that that experience didn’t destroy my interest in ocean racing.”  It is scarcely surprising, though, that experiences like these have made Adam conscious about safety.  “The reason I’m passionate about Ninety Seven is she is a really solid boat.”

Craig King, the Tasmanian owner of Interum is equally passionate about his boat.  “The thing that stands out about this boat above all else is that the crew falls in love with it.  Lyons hit the jackpot with this.  Everything is right,” he says.  “I only ever intended to keep her for two years but I don’t think I could sell her.  I can’t envisage having another boat and always moaning that my last boat was better.

“Anyway, my crew won’t let me sell her.  She is very strong, and a very technical boat.  You need to sail her well to get the best out of her.”

Originally set up for ocean racing, King has reconfigured Interum for round the buoys racing in Hobart this past year, but his young crew pressed him to do the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race. 

While King is content with Interum, for Chris Dare, Dysons Cobb & Co is part of a big learning curve with the ultimate aim of winning the Hobart in a new “IRC sled” he hopes to start building next year.