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Clock is ticking on handicap winners

Home 2007 Clock is ticking on handicap winners

Syd Fischer and his crew on the way to Hobart

The US STP65 Rosebud, owned by Florida-based Roger Sturgeon, has almost certainly won the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race's major trophy, the Tattersall's Cup for the overall winner on IRC handicap.

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The US STP65 Rosebud, owned by Florida-based Roger Sturgeon, has almost certainly won the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race's major trophy, the Tattersall's Cup for the overall winner on IRC handicap.

Only Zephyr (James Connell), a Farr 1020 stock production yacht, still had a chance of bettering Rosebud's corrected time and that was steadily slipping away. At 11am she was 149 nautical miles from the finish, doing 6.5 knots, with an ETA increasing from two hours earlier to five hours beyond the time she needed to win.

Meantime Sturgeon in his trademark floppy-brimmed canvas hat was watching a delivery crew load stores aboard Rosebud for the voyage back to Sydney, in time for the yacht to line up for the 268nm Pittwater to Coffs Harbour Race which starts on January 2.

The Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race win would complete a hat trick for his Australian racing campaign. Rosebud also won the SOLAS Big Boat Challenge IRC handicap division and the Rolex Rating Series warm-up regatta for the Rolex Sydney Hobart.

He would not be engaged in discussion about his probable win: "Well, I always wait for the last boat, so maybe tomorrow I'll say.

"I am pleased with the boat, the crew, the team. We got what we came here for, to better ourselves, better our boat, better our team.

"We are miles further down the road than we ever dreamed at this point of time and that was the whole point of being here (in Australia)."

Rosebud is the first launched of the new STP65 class. Inspired by the success of the TP52 class, the two leading American offshore racing clubs, the Storm Trysail Club and the Transpacific Yacht Club, combined to develop the STP65 rule.

The clubs identify it as a box-rule class for a high-performance, light-displacement, fixed keel yacht within fixed parameters for both inshore and offshore sailing that are tight enough to minimise obsolescence. It sets an overall length of 20m (65.6ft), displacement range of 13,000 - 13,400kg and a generous sail plan for good light-air performance.

Farr Yacht Design gave Sturgeon a good all-round performer for his planned program of world-wide inshore and offshore events, including in the coming year, Newport Bermuda Race, Cork Week, Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup, and Rolex Middle Sea Race. Westerly Marine, Santa Ana, California, built her. Sturgeon, who previously owned a TP52, also called Rosebud, shipped her to Australia after completing the Transpac Race where they finished third in division and registered the third fastest time.

He believed Australia offered the best competition in the world at this time of year. "We thought we would learn a lot."

As many as five STP65s could be racing in the Onion Patch series in June. Sturgeon said he would try to encourage other STP65 owners to enter the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race. "I will tell them the whole truth about being here and how wonderful you are treated in the whole country, that the sailing is awesome."

He added with a chuckle: "And if you are intimidated about a Hobart, choose a milder year. How do you know which it is, I don't know. I got lucky this time."

He enjoyed the race: "I wouldn't have been anywhere else in the world. It was just awesome and coming into Tasmania was just beautiful. It was like a long voyage at sea, as if you had been out six months and finally saw land. It felt just great."

Rosebud finished at 7:02pm last evening after her own struggle with calm and variable winds just beyond the Iron Pot light 11nm from the finish up the Derwent River.

The three yachts best positioned to beat her - Syd Fischer's TP52 Ragamuffin, Ray Roberts' Cookson 50 Quantum Racing, and Geoff Ross' Reichel/Pugh 55 Yendys - all "parked" in lengthier calms in Storm Bay and in the river where a strong outgoing tidal flow stopped them cold at times.

Eventually they finished under spinnakers before a wafting southeasterly, just after 3:00am, with Quantum Racing beating Yendys across the line by two seconds and Ragamuffin another 6min 42sec behind, beating them both on corrected time.

Time ran out for the remaining yacht in the running, Bruce Taylor's new Reichel/Pugh 40 Chutzpah, when she slowed in lighter air after rounding Tasman Island, 41nm from the finish.

Dockside, after learning Rosebud was handicap leader, Roger Sturgeon exclaimed: "Wow, there were a lot of things going on out there; it was touch and go for a long time, it builds character."

Grant Wharington's maxi Skandia, which broke the top two metres off her mast in a broach off the Tasmanian coast, struggled across the line in near calm this morning under jury rig. She was third and in touch with the race-leading maxis Wild Oats XI and City Index Leopard, when the mishap occurred, 150 miles from the finish of the 628nm course.

After securing the broken topmast to the rig, Wharington's crew hoisted the J4 jib on the baby stay to keep racing, and had the trysail up for a while. Then Casey Smith, who had earlier gone up the mast four times to secure the broken tip, free-climbed again, using the trysail lugs as ladder rings, to fasten a block at the middle spreader.

"We were able to get the mainsail back up to a second reef position," said Wharington. "We were a bit cautious about not wanting to load the thing up too much anyway. But we were still well down on sail area."

The Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race IRC handicap overall leaders are: 1, Rosebud by 1hr 21min 33sec from Ragamuffin with another 36min to Quantum Racing, followed by Chutzpah and Matt Allen's, Ichi Ban.

Quantum Racing has provisionally won Division A, Rosebud Division B and Chutzpah Division C; Divisions D and E are still to be determined.

Sixteen yachts have finished, 63 are still racing.