Grey-bellied clouds threaten from the west and kunanyi is beheaded by mist. Overhead there is no blue. The water is somewhere between gunmetal and teal, with a 35-knot wind ripping white crests from the chop. Our 33-foot yacht, Pinta, is close-hauled, on a hard lean, with water boiling over the leeward gunwales. The wind is loud and powerful. The half-dozen crew are piled on the high end to stabilise the boat.
The skipper yells, “Ready to tack,” and everyone scrambles to position. The boat turns, and I pull hard on the jib sheet, dragging the headsail around to the opposite side, as another crewman adjusts the mainsail with the traveller. The wind is now behind us and the boat slows marginally.
I scramble forward to the bow and ready the spinnaker. Pole in position, halyard attached, sheet and guy lines shackled. The skipper gives the order and the colourful, light sail is pulled from its slumber, bellowing and whipping in the gusts. It is vibrant electric-blue against the dreary scene, and as it snaps into shape we feel the power of the captured gale.
A gust catches the spinnaker, turning the boat violently, rounding up to starboard, and some primal part of my brain prepares to jump from the vessel, before control is regained for a time.
Once more the boat broaches and I see the spinnaker tear away near the top. I yell, “Tear!” over the howling wind, and the skipper yells back, “Unshackle.” I release the starboard sheet-ropes and the sail flaps free, like some animated football banner. The tear has bisected the sail. Around us a plethora of vibrant spinnakers appear in reds and greens and blues, defiant against the bleak day.
We are in the midst of our third race of The Crown Series Bellerive Regatta. It is the biggest on the island. Close to 150 boats holding 600 sailors are on the water with us. It is an egalitarian fleet, encompassing boats from slow old buckets to sleek 50-footers, which scud past, keeled-over exposing glossy hulls, as uniformed crew smile down from the gunwales with the reserved for the successful and the lucky.
. . .
The regatta dates back to 1853. To put that in the perspective of the national psyche, it began the same year cricket was first played at Melbourne Cricket Ground. It pre-dates the inaugural defence of the America’s Cup, and the invention of AFL football.
Then called the Kangaroo Bay Regatta, the inaugural event was mired in controversy. Lt-Governor Denison who opened the regatta, was so unpopular that his detractors organised a rival event. That year the Colonial Times said of him, “There is not a respectable settler from Cape Grim to Cape Pillar, who does not only abhor his politics, detest his agents, but utterly loathes his vile mob ...”
It’s unclear which event was more successful but despite, or perhaps because of, the initial bad publicity, the regatta became a permanent fixture.
There had been previous regattas on the Derwent. In 1831 the Hobart Arrow Club organised Tasmania’s first unofficial regatta, with 11 boats competing in a single race, watched by a large crowd, many from the first generation of Europeans to settle in on the banks of the Derwent. In those days, yacht racing was a mere sideshow to the main event: whaling ship racing.
In July, 1804, Rev Robert Knopwood claimed, “We passed so many whales [in the Derwent] that it was dangerous for the boat to go up the river unless you kept very near the shore.” The following year, Knopwood reported seeing more than 60 whales near Sullivans Cove.
By the time of the first official Hobart Town Regatta, the Tasmanian whaling industry was near its peak, with Hobart home to a large fleet of whaling ships, as well as being a major port for international ships plundering the south seas.
That inaugural race was between 15 whaling ships, with recreational sailboats competing only in prelude races. The event was held off Pavilion Point, near Government House, on December 1, 1838. It was the same year the Melbourne Cricket Club was founded (and began looking for a decent ground to play on). The than Tasmanian Governor, Sir John Franklin, provided free cheese and beer for the sailing onlookers, luring a crowd of about 12,000 – more than half the population of Hobart Town.
. . .
Things had changed by 1856, however. The new governor, Sir Henry Fox Young, proved to be no fan of the revelry that the event had become known for, insisting the regatta be moved due to the proliferation of broken bottles and rubbish being left in his front yard. It was promptly moved to the Domain foreshore, where it remains today.
Sailing ships like the Derwent Hunter were the life-blood of Hobart until the 1880s, when steam-powered vessels began to be a faster and more reliable option. While whaling barques hunted their bloody cargo, merchant ketches would carry passengers and goods locally, as well as to the colonial ports of Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne, and further abroad to the trade route ports of New Zealand, Manila, Batavia, Mauritius, India and Britain.
In the early days of competitive sailing on the Derwent, those merchant ships would also compete annually for a perpetual trophy in a race known as the Cock of The Derwent. The winner had the honour of adorning their masthead with the Golden Cock, a gilded rooster, like some lustrous yet ineffectual weather-vane.
Perhaps the most successful of these ships was the May Queen. Still afloat at Constitution Dock, she was originally launched at Franklin on June 5, 1867. The following summer she won her first of many Hobart Regatta Trading Ketch races.
The speed of these merchant vessels was at the fore for ship builders as a fiscal consideration, in terms of transporting produce, but also for the kudos of regatta silverware. When the Huon Timber Company ketch Speedwell was launched in 1890 her builder, John Wilson exclaimed, “She will carry 25,000 square feet of timber, draw five feet of water, and beat the May Queen.”
And she did.
The competitive nature and cachet of this race was captured in the Mercury newspaper’s account of the Togo’s defense of the 1924 Cock, “The crowd which witnessed the vessels’ return was of very large proportions. Not ten minutes after been made fast the Golden Cock was aloft again above the Togo’s truck, there to remain for at least another 12 months. The victory was proclaimed per medium of the whistles of the steamers in port, and a great noise was made.”
The last Golden Cock was hoisted in 1954, with the May Queen pipped at the post by SV Lenna. But by this time another race was gaining momentum.
In January, 1946, a modest 35-foot timber cutter named Rani sailed past the Iron Pot light house and into the Derwent. The crew, shivering in woolen jumpers and oilskins, had just sailed 628 nautical miles in six days, 14 hours and 22 minutes, beating eight other boats in a race from Sydney. The skipper, Captain John Holden Illingsworth, a British Navy officer based at Garden Island in Sydney, had been at dinner with sailors from the newly formed Cruising Yacht Club of Australia when he was asked by founding member Peter Luke to join in a cruise with several others to Hobart. He had replied, “‘I will, if you make a race of it.”
And so was born the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, with participants among the very wealthiest and luckiest. But they still occasionally tear spinnakers.
. . .
Back on the Pinta, folding up the shredded pieces of sail, the man at the helm is Bob Ford. He has competed twice in the Sydney to Hobart in his 70 years. The owner of the boat, Bob’s son Dan, has asked him to steer while he tends to ropes and crew. Bob Ford’s sharp eyes stare out from a lowered cap and high-collared red Stormy jacket. His cheeks are windblown rubicund, but his grip and stance are solid. He calmly tacks towards Kangaroo Bay, glancing starboard to where his esplanade home watches.
As we drop the mainsail and start up the motor, I ask Bob about the feeling of coming into shelter after a race like the Sydney to Hobart. After all that heavy weather it must be a good feeling to be back in relative shelter of the Derwent? He gives me a half smile that’s edged with nostalgia, “When you get to Sydney, it’s a holiday. When you make it back into Hobart, you’re thinking about that lawn that needs mowing.”
Jonno Blood has been chased by angry gypsies in Hungary, arrested by soldiers in the Ukraine, and slept in a three-metre wide bed with a Red Yao chieftain and his five wives in China. He has also lived in London and Melbourne, before easing back into life in his native Tasmania. While still scratching itchy feet often, he loves his island digs, its often hidden stories, and the characters and capers that make it lavishly singular.
