Midnight Rambler

Since launching the latest Midnight Rambler mid-2011, Ed Psaltis, Bob Thomas and Michael Bencsik, winners of the fatal 1998 Sydney Hobart race with a Hick 35, AFR Midnight Rambler, have scored various podium finishes. They finished last year’s Hobart 18th overall and fifth in Division 2, good enough to help team mates ADA Celestial and Balance to win the Southern Cross Cup. The previous Hobart reaped 17th overall and second in IRC Division 2. They also finished second overall in the 2014 Gosford Lord Howe Island race and 10th overall in the 2014 Land Rover Gold Coast Yacht race. The trio added a new sail wardrobe to help lift the boat’s light-wind performance and finished second in Division 2 of the CYCA Trophy in December 2014. Ben Psaltis (19) joins his Dad again this year.

Between them, the owners and crew can declare over 120 Hobarts, and her owners have won every major offshore race on the east coast, including the Gosford Lord Howe Island and Sydney Mooloolaba races twice, and finally succeeded in winning the Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race in 2009 with a former Midnight Rambler (a modified Farr 40), having previously won their division three times. Psaltis and Thomas have twice won the CYCA’s Ocean Racer of the Year award – 1999 (as owners of the winning the 1998 Hobart boat) and 2007 (on winning the 2006/07 BWPS), prior to Bencsik joining them as an owner. Psaltis announced last year that the 2014 Sydney Hobart would be his last, but after some months away from sailing, the veins craved a salt water refill.    

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