Sydney-Hobart 2006-Battle of the Canters

Sydney-Hobart this year looks to be exciting wtih the great showdown between Maximus and Wild Oats and the Volvo 70 ABN Ambro.
For those that may not remember- Wild Oats is a "pure" CBTF design by Reichel-Pugh with a twin foil, 55° canting system. Maximus uses another version of CBTF with a lifting forward cannard that has a flap on the trailing edge. Maximus' secret weapon is that her canting keel strut is extendable increasing her RM a lot. I think I read that Wild Oats has already trounced Maximus once before in the Med this past summer but, if I remember correctly, it was fairly light compared to a Sydney -Hobart. The scuttlebutt is that Maximus is good on a reach.
And we know the VO70's are fast...
Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2006.. About the race
Address:http://rolexsydneyhobart.com/editorial.asp?key=527

 

Vo70 #2

According to Scuttlebutt, the former Brunel(now Ichi Ban) will sail the Sydney-Hobart-making two VO 70's in the race.

 

It will be intersting indeed but... Let's hope that the weather won't turn too bad, if we are to see ALL entries with canting keels finishing the race

Mikey

 

If it looks like a real slow race will they have to ship a few extra jerry cans of fuel?

MIK

 

Go Wild Oats! / SA Thread../ Fleet Warned of Gales

Hope Wild Oats cleans up!
Some nuggets in this thread:
Sydney - Hobart - Sailing Anarchy Forums
Address:http://www.sailinganarchy.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=44267&pid=981601&st=100&
==========================
According to Scuttlebutt: "The Sydney to Hobart yacht race fleet has received a weather warning just six days out from the start, with possible gale force southerlies off the New South Wales coast on Boxing Day".

Sydney-Hobart fleet warned of gales - Breaking News - Sport - Breaking News
Address:http://www.smh.com.au/news/Sport/SydneyHobart-fleet-warned-of-gales/2006/12/20/1166290589020.html
---------------------------
More Coverage:
Sail World: Sail and sailing, cruising, boating news
Address:http://www.sail-world.com/newstext/

 

Dismasted

Lude Ingvall's 90' Maxi "Diabetes" was dismasted while training for the SH off of Sydney in 16-17knots. Source: Scuttlebutt

 

Sorry Doug, I have not noticed this thread. I have tried to delete the other, but I was not able. I will post here and I hope Jeff can delete the other.

About the "battle of the canters", it is a pity that they don't allow multihulls in this race. It would enlarge that battle

3 days before the race starts the two Volvo 70 were informed they are going to have a supplementary handicap.

Something to do with the upper part of the sails (the ones they have used all the time). With 3 days spare they can not modify the sails.

Seems quite unfair to me (3 days before!). What do you think guys?

 

a good site for following the race.
http://rolexsydneyhobart.com/yacht_tracker.asp?key=522

by the way, its been damn cold weather coming over these last two days in Melbourne.
Last week we were close to forty degrees and completely covered in smoke from statewide catastrophic bushfires.
Yesterday, Christmas, we had snow and hail throughout the hilltop melbourne suburbs- FREEZING!
christmas at lake mountain,

Dandenong north

 

Hopefully here is the article about the penalty for the VO70s.

It was a frame thingy, so hope this ref works
http://www.sail-world.com/news_w.cfm?SEid=&CkID=&srcid=0&ntid=0&nid=29750&tickeruid=0&tickercid=0

 

As of 17.00 WO 2Nm ahead of Max. & skandia. With 570Nm to go.

Totally agree! If you let in canters Why not multi's......simple as that.

'Cept the canters would be blown outa the water. (Dougie rev)

The weather gets more weird every year. We have had snow as well.

UV index is the highest ever recorded! Damn the oil burners!!

 

I don't know about that, but I do know that Doug was right when he had foreseen that the future racing monohulls would be canting keelers. I remember that most people, including me had disagreed. Facts, not only on this race, but almost everywhere give him credit.

About the multis, I think that a tough race like this one would be important to improve (or prove) their seaworthiness. I don't know how they would handle some really bad weather that is usual on this race, but I would like to see it, and I am sure that multihull skippers would be delighted and wouldn’t miss it.

 

It looks ABN AMRO is going fast and on an outside course. Maybe he is getting more wind. It looks that those polemic 30 minutes can turn out to be decisive.

That sad story about the ratings his even more unbelievable (BoatMik thanks for the link).
It turns out that it has nothing to do with the race organizers, but with the RORC and the IRC rating office’s. This story gives little credit to them:

"When the Royal Ocean Racing Club in the UK was involved with the specification of the Volvo 70 four years ago, the square topped mainsail design was well known to them.
….
Only four days before the most important IRC rated race in the world in 2006, Mike Sanderson’s ABN AMRO and Matt Allen’s Ichi Ban have both discovered their square topped mainsails have been now been penalized under the IRC ratings, used to calculate handicap results for the race.

The physical headboards are around 100mm in length but for rating purposes it seems they have a new calculated dimension of 2.3 meters.

Matt Allen, the vice-commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, said ‘I received a new rating on Thursday morning with a rig factor change. I spent all day puzzling over it. I contact the IRC rating office’s Mike Urwin and he said ‘We did not really measure the boat correctly before. We did not measure the square top headboard.’

‘But I’ve been all the way through the regulations and there is no definition of the headboard, so I can’t see how they can measure it any way other than its actual dimension which is just on 100mm. Mike is saying he has calculated it as 2.3 meters!!

So it seems the IRC office have invented a definition.

'RORC can change the ratings if they see boat exploring either unforeseen or loop-hole type issues … but that's not relevant here because these mainsails are extremely common.

Allen said the new rating savaged Ichi Ban's 2006 chances, costing 20-30 minutes of race time, more like 30 minutes which could easily be the winning difference in Hobart.
….

What owners around the world need to understand, is that if this decision stands.. there can be a decision to penalize a particular element of the boat, …but it can be done now … without notice, so there is no chance to react. This is very very unfair.

….'If this is how the IRC Rule is going to administered then I will quit IRC Racing.'

Sanderson … said yesterday 'RORC is fully aware of the specifications. We haven't even changed anything, that's what stinks,' Sanderson said. 'They've got these sails to the millimeters on file.'

…. We are still waiting to be shown the definition of headboard in the IRC rule to allow any measurement greater than its actual dimension."

 

ABn is either becalmed or stopped for repairs.
Yacht tracker is a great peice of tech. in lieu of TV coverage!
They are back to 5kts. Hope it ain't serious. This lookiing to be an exciting
finish. The pundits were right for a tactical race.

That last minute arbitary ruling is apalling. Downright unfair.

 

Yes, you were right :

Maximus and ABN AMRO dismasted in 30k wind.

"Between 1am and 2am this morning, ABN AMRO ONE, which was well east of the rhumbline took the race lead from Wild Oats XI which had led the fleet since the 1.00pm start on Sydney Harbour yesterday afternoon".


http://rolexsydneyhobart.com/news.asp?key=2955

 

I'm not sure the claim that canters are the future of mono sailing is proven yet, Vega. The big boats are performing well (when the sticks stay up) but the performance of the smaller boats doesn't seem startling (the canting Melges 24 is slower than the standard Melges in the only results I can find, the Farr 36OD canter isn't amazingly quick, the Hicks 30 canters can't beat the Mumm 30s, the Hick 40 canter isn't doing much, the Bethwaite canting sportsboat has tested and sailed slower than the normal version, etc) and really, how many boats are we talking about? The TP52, Farr 40 and Mumm 30 seem to be THE racing boats of the moment to most offshore sailors.

There was an interesting quote from Sean Langman, owner of the Open 60 Xena AAPT Grundig and charterer last year of the canting 90 Nicorette. He left the 60 on shore this year and took down a 70 year old gaff rigged 30 footer. The paper said that he was sick of running an engine and canters and big boats. "That's not what the Hobart is all about" were his words, from memory. Neville Crichton has been said to prefer the non canting 90 and is supposedly getting out of big boats to go to a TP52.

Surely if the big canters were so attractive, there would be more than three of them? I don't know any time in the entire history of sailing (war years apart) when the top end of the maxi fleet has only consisted of three boats (maybe 4 if you count Nicorette), with no new boats announced, planned or under construction. All three boats come from one corner of the world. Europe, the USA and Asia have looked at the 98s and gone "no thanks".

They're fascinating boats. They looked great yesterday. But ORMA 60s and 18 Foot Skiffs and G Class cats look great and they haven't got big numbers and aren't the future.

I don't see why multis should be allowed into the Sydney-Hobart race. Any class or type of boat should be allowed to run a race for whatever boats its likes, without being pressured. The Ronde Texel race is just for cats; no boards, no tris, no skiffs.It doesn't get pressure to let boards or kites in, so why do people demand multis be allowed into the Hobart?

There doesn't seem to be any massive pent-up demand to race multis down here. Despite the preconception that the big clubs are all anti-multi, they are not. The big club in South Australia lets multis race, but they only got one or two and they are/were a problem; how do you handicap a boat that is so different in performance? One of the big Sydney clubs let multis in; they were very welcoming to us when we sailed in their first multi regatta, but the racing was pretty weak and the multis never got sufficient numbers. The southern Sydney port allows multis in, and again handicapping becomes a problem and there's only 3 multis maximum. The big Queensland and Northern Territory clubs let multis in, and in the past there's been cooperation in Victoria and Tassy. So in most centres here, you have had the chance to race a multi, yet the numbers have not grown.

The cat clubs are just as exclusionary as the mono clubs. The culture between some of the classes is very different; merging the different cultures may just annoy people and harm the racing scene. We're already having enough difficulties comparing 98 foot canters to the 30 footers, why make the situation harder?

I'm not biased against new classes or multis; my immediate family founded one cat club and hopes to found a new cat class. But multis have no more right to waltz into a mono race than Nacras or Lasers or Macgregor 26s have to rock into a Hobie or windsurfer regatta.