With the 80th starting signal in the most beautiful harbor in the world on Boxing Day, an ordeal began for the almost 1,300 sailors, which in the anniversary edition also stretched over 628 nautical miles (1,163 kilometers) across the Bass Strait to the extremely demanding Derwent River with its usual calm to the harbor of the Tasmanian capital Hobart.
In the end, it’s not about the winner based on calculated time. The focus is on the Maxis – large yachts measuring 100 feet and a good 30 meters in length, for which their millionaire owners employ professionals as a crew. Christian Beck with his Law Connect is fighting for the triple in his anniversary year: He was able to win the last two races with his Law Connect under sometimes dramatic conditions.
But even before this regatta, he is, as always, piling on his main competitor, the Comanche: “They make everything more difficult for us, because our problem is simply that the Comanche is the same class of boat, but better in every way. So if things are going well for us, things are going great for them,” he said, referring to the expected weather conditions. Comanche has won the race four times.
Comanche takes the lead
The conditions were demanding right from the start. Although the wind was only around 15 knots, there was already a high wave in the harbor and then along the coast that was causing problems for the crews. Beck made it out of the bay first on a local course. His pursuer, the Maxi Comanche, set the record in 2014 for the first ton at 4:35 minutes.
This year, Law Connect took just under six minutes, with Comanche a few meters behind her. The two leaders then went on a match race south along the Australian coast. Until nightfall, it was a test of strength between the navigators and tacticians on board – on the leading boats, all professionals with decades of experience, often Olympic participants. A good six hours after the start, the Comanche took the lead.
By then, Law Connect chief navigator Chris “Lew” Lewis, twice Australian Sailor of the Year but known for being plagued by seasickness in these conditions, had done a great job. He kept his boat in the lead for the first few strokes off Australia’s coast.
Wind and waves are constantly increasing on this cross, no one is allowed to fall overboard here; But Beck has brought five-time Australian Olympic swimming champion, “Thorpedo” Ian Thorpe, on deck as a celebrity. Of course, the former world-class swimmer said before the start that he was looking forward to competing “on and not in the water” this time.
However, he was also underwater because the three meter high wave made it very wet for everyone. On the first cross to the south, the former swimmer apparently stayed comfortably on the windward edge of the racing yacht under the constant shower of spray water. Winds should pick up to 25 knots in the afternoon and night.
Jost Stollmann knows such and much harder conditions well enough. With his Alithia, a German yacht is at the start again this year. Stollmann, once the founder of Compunet and a multimillionaire after the sale, was chosen as economics minister in Gerhard Schröder’s shadow cabinet in 1998, but from 2002 onwards he sailed around the world with his wife Fiona, their five children and a crew, including teachers.
He found his second home in Australia. The family settled in one of the most beautiful neighborhoods on the bay, and Stollmann founded the payment service Tyro, with which he shocked the banking industry. After his retirement, his wife had the family built a second boat with the aim of sailing around the six capes of the world. Meanwhile, Stollmann earned his captaincy in Australia.
After years of sailing back in his second home, he wants to compete in the traditional regatta with the Alithia, translated “truth”, which has been slimmed down for the race but still weighs 50 tons; After covering around 61,000 nautical miles on all the world’s oceans in the past five years, she is racing for the Düsseldorf Yacht Club, Stollmann’s hometown.
The owner made up the crew primarily of friends, including father and son Böhnert from Hamburg, who sailed with their Lunatix in 2018 as part of their Sydney Hobart circumnavigation. “We have to learn very quickly,” said cruising sailor Stollmann before the start – even though he had already sailed a Sydney-Hobart race before.
On the other side of the experience scale is his navigator Jim Nixon, who has already counted 30 of the races. The difference between a sophisticated racing yacht and a “performance cruiser” for sailing around the world is shown by the boat speed on the first cruise: While the Law Connect raced over the waves at a good 15 knots (28 kilometers per hour), the Alithia reached 9.5 knots. Six hours after the start she was in 26th place.
While the expensive, the big and the fast are fighting for victory, the Maritimo Katwinchar was the secret winner even before the starting signal at 1 p.m. local time in Sydney Harbor: The yacht is 121 years old, making it the oldest boat that has ever sailed in the regatta. In 1951 she had sailed three men from England to Down Under.
Today Michael Spies is at the helm. He is anything but a cranky classic car fan: in 1999 he broke the racing record with the Nokia, then won Sydney Hobart in 2003. It will be difficult to repeat such a feat: a good six hours after the start, the Maritimo was in 98th place of the 128 boats in the field.
