1998 Sydney Hobart Yacht Race film part 1

the Sydney to Hobart is one of the world's great ocean races every year of the day after Christmas yachts from around the world gather in Sydney Harbor for the annual pilgrimage south to Tasmania in 1998 it was to start like any other year clear blue skies and a light nor easterly breeze the crews were told to expect some rough conditions ahead but no one could ever have imagined the tragedy that was about to unfold on the 115 yachts that set sail only 43 would finish the race this Sydney to Hobart race would go down in the record books as the greatest single disaster in Australian maritime history this is the story of those sailors who braved the elements and lived to tell their tale always enjoy on Boxing Day December the 26th Sydney Harbour is the focal point for one of Australia's most spectacular sporting events the start of the 1,000 kilometers Sydney to Hobart yacht race the Sydney to Hobart began in 1954 with just nine yachts making that first journey to Tasmania it was to be the beginning of many races marred by ferocious storms and gale force winds all agreed it would have been far easier sailing north into caramel waters but the decision to challenge some of the world's most dangerous oceans and head south toward Antarctica had much to do with the Australian Way of life its sense of ruggedness its spirit of adventure in the years ahead more than 4,000 yachts would complete the race with 35,000 crew braving the elements the Sydney to Hobart is now internationally recognized as the world's toughest ocean-going race just making it to Hobart has become a feat in itself the starts good fun and finishes good fun on the whole rest of it is just an absolute night me it's the probably like the worst date you'll ever have in your life you know I do it because I'm professional that's how I make a living and why people do it for fun I've got no idea there's only one reason for doing it and that's because it's it's renowned to be the toughest race in the world and it is it's a hardest it is definitely the physically most demanding rates to do the the conditions there's guaranteed to be tough conditions every year the year that it's a smooth sail south will be one in a hundred not I think I'll ever get to see the senator Hobart has a reputation around the world as the place you or the race you do to get the crap beaten out of you yet despite the danger the race continues to get in popularity remarkably over more than half a century only two people had lost their lives during grace that was until 1998 nice and enjoy our story begins on Sydney high on the afternoon of the 27th of December 1998 with 115 yachts preparing to set sail for Homer gonna take a line down oh come on oh c'mon got him there Rick come away little lamb it'll make them hide a my dad the feeling on that on the start of a Sydney to Hobart is always the most exciting point of the race if you have guys that have never sailed this sort of race before we had one guy on board eighty-two years old competing in his first Sydney to Hobart Papa Tom he was looking forward to it the buzz of the helicopters overhead there's a massive crowd around you there's thousands of spectator boats a perfect Sydney summer's day you're in shorts and t-shirt looking forward this is what you've been building up for all year and here's the start - excitement a lot of lot of talk caution and choosing a line to take out of the harbor to avoid running into another yacht or into even even part of the spectator fleet it wasn't long before the race had its first run just moments before the starting gun there was a collision between Maxie ketch Nokia and sword of Orion protests flags went up immediately but the race continued it would take more than a minor collision to stop these sailors in their quest for hope as you come up to that start your motion world the 10 unit gun goes everyone starts to hover around the 5 minute gun goes it's getting closer that countdown from three minute is unbelievable the helicopters come in the boats gather together and you're just waiting for that final gun and when that gun goes it's like a charge to their heads it's it's like the Melbourne Cup ten times it's you just cannot describe how the adrenaline going through your body both side by side and your beating and you a would beat them to the heads let alone two over listen to the princess coin as the beat rounded the heads out of Sydney Harbor us yacht sayonara showed why she's regarded as the world's leading maxi as she quickly shot to the lead with Australian favourite Brenda Bella in close pursuit followed by Wild Thing the forecast is for fairly light to moderate north easterly winds down the coast around the 15 to 20 not mark that the boats will ridge best rate or win the boats which the best rate they'll encounter a change a very strong change from the West or Southwest and winds will be up around the 40 knot mark with that change the conditions were ideal for Nokia the biggest boat in the fleet was rapidly making up lost time after the collision at the start of the race we've now got the spinnaker up stay salat main salt missin Stacy and also the mizzen main so we've got plenty of sailor beautiful breeze coming out of left hand side of the boat here and we're now heading for Hobart now we're traveling with a very good speed of all five sails up and you're certainly catching up the leading boats oddly so having the spirit on the boat is good and we keep going for it the race would take the fleet down the east coast of Australia 630 nautical miles south from Sydney across Bass Strait and into Hobart on average a three-day say at their sides we were just trying to really enjoy ourselves and get the most out of it join bit of Sun you doing the brace from behind we were working the back pretty hard we were prior steering and he was smoking his way down the lives as he got pretty nice despite the relative calm the crews knew it wouldn't last and storm was starting to build further south we've just received a latest computer model guidance which came out around 1:00 o'clock this afternoon and it does show that the low will be very intense and will develop in best rate and it looks like now winds are going to be up around the 45 to 55 not mark and a forecast a storm warning forecast has been issued for winds of that string but no one not even the weather bureau knew just how intense that low-pressure system would be cut now we're getting into the preparations for this storm front to come through the grinders are working pretty hard here next to us but in particularly we do have Lisa going up the rig in order to change some of the sail setup we've got here she's looking at putting in a roof line I believe that what she's up to get ready to drop some of that sail down it can be brought down about a third of its size well almost a half of its size in order to take some of the pressures out of the rig when the breeze really starts to kick in how do you think the nokia will handle these conditions up against the rest of the fleet she's a very strong boat she was built for the round-the-world race in that race I had to sail in adverse conditions mainly this sort of sailing downwind but I do get adverse condition sailing upwind around Cape Horn etc the boat was built for those conditions that we believe she'll hold together well for us the cruise could be excused for an air of complacency after all the last five Sydney to Hobart races had started with similar storm warnings there's an unusual-looking store but normally a storefront comes in it's just a single line across the horizon in this case we could see we could see two fronts and we could see a very very sharp lead gap in between and massive electrical storms and and the speed at which these storms are coming on I've never I've certainly had a witness storms at sea coming so quickly you can feel the air change there was a temperature change the density of the air changes and so we really knew it was coming on we got our sail down nice and early the winds we just kept on picking up the first to hit the storm were the Maxie's the God's best equipped to handle the heavy conditions the smaller yachts when our scattered over a 40 kilometer area here is doctor control go to control by the bikers patrol to inform you the yacht IV in M row he's undertow and he providers by early morning on day two the storm had begun to take its toll we just heard this really loud bang and the boat spun out of control so there's half a chance we'd hit a sunfish or some debris in the water and the rudder sheared off at the deck and from then on it was hanging on titers about bridge wildly and through a lot of the crew down into the the lured side rail and then we started to take in water where the rudder had sheared off so what for a while they were in dire straits six yards had been forced to retire after suffering hull and freaking damage a sure sign of things to come all right look why they cover the orders he goes are we decided like there's only one you've got one lot but plenty of high braces to go we decided it was it was a wise thing to retire gracefully early before it was too late a measure of how we go she's quite lost in these counseling anything else and I guess get us get us close to home out of it quicker than some of the other bike we're gonna mean for a good day I died and went inside to get a bit of food in their bellies in the morning parks had a few bananas and I think for a lot of the throw that was the last thing we had before before the before the storm by midday on day two conditions were rapidly deteriorating the extreme low was no longer a prediction it had not become a harsh reality intense and awesomely frightening the gusting occasionally as far as 85 knots you'd have a see pattern of about sort of twelve to fourteen foot seas and then all of a sudden a whole set of 30 and 40 foot waves had come through it was a live person system which formed around the front the actual dynamics of the storm are quite complex it was provided to the jet stream and in a whole lot of cold air coming up through southern Victoria and caused a rapid intensification of the system despite the warnings many crews decided to continue the race thinking it was safer to ride out the storm rather than turn and run from it and the happy savers we might have been shouting about 24 hours of seems like 24 we are a bit powered with and I just why did you hire bad but I will throw all the family where oh well the rice organizers were saying to us you proceeded on risk Glen : yeah that was that was pretty that was pretty pretty heavy situation because we had to we had to make our minds up so that's when we decided we were going to still press on because we were far enough South to to make it marginal for us to turn back and we thought at the time that it would have been no better to head north in those conditions and in fact with what it meant worse it was a critical decision in many cases a life-or-death decision we're on the biggest boat in the fleet and at times you're five meters clear of the water and the waves are still four meters over your head rolling throwing you across the deck smashing the lifelines it's all people picked up and hurled into parts of the boat badly injuring themselves first concern was that everybody was safe on board the yacht second concern was to look after the yacht as much as possible and our last concern was to worry about racing we were just getting rolled time after time and that was really unsettling for the crew down below and it was dangerous for the colonel on top we knew when we were getting rolled we were getting fully riled and the boat was virtually submerged and so you'd come up out of the water and just feel like a submarine and thought there'll be bodies people flailing everywhere China trying to get back to their feet and you know trying to get rid of this how about again as fate would have it the storm and the rest converged in the most dangerous place possible Bass Strait a cold remote area with highly unpredictable weather patterns for best rates and Turia's for strong storms and a lot of it's related to the shape at the ocean bottom the ocean currents they all combine together to make a storm particularly ferocious especially Eastern Bass Strait but this storm would be one that would you only see once every 5 or 10 years by early afternoon the crews were experiencing extreme conditions similar to a cycler the Sydney to Hobart on from a yacht race to a race force of light conditions that you just beyond imagination so you're talking about seven or eight hours of just the most awesomely frightening sailing conditions and you can't hear the all the boys are going horse cause they're yelling no you can't you can't hear it here we get hood up probably got a hat on underneath it poor I'll help me man he's sitting there just getting pasted all the boys are killed up on the rail it sucks you know people do things are enormous and you don't even notice the amount of energy you expend just doing little little things just even just hanging onto a Fenty sitting on the rail like that you're full you got a fleet embrace arm and you're hanging on like any young rivers in your abs and your bags and your bomb and everything all like dripping on you know and it's very physical I I'm a CLE from Tennessee darling for the Maritime Safety they're wandering in the areola able to hold in the area of these stand aside here in case a person sir need to take into a life raft or abandoned the ship have been at the boat prior to the rescue ever every sailor every helicopter this is Siena I will inquire however we are not that maneuverable we are under very small tiles sea is very rough down here although we do have very you know I'll be back to you in a moment let me see chopper Roger wedding and maybe see chopper to stand aside of Roger we have within 30 minutes one rescue chopper quickly followed by another of the yacht stand aside was the first buck to strike real trouble with its mast gone taking on water the 12 crew were at the mercy of the elements there's a very violent fast sharp roll the templates down port bow are dug in and the boat flipped over and within seconds fortunately at arrived itself and we were definitely in survival mode at that stage on arrival we were confronted with conditions were just what can be described as absolutely horrendous there the super around 60 foot high the wire that the winds were just 6070 are not something that which I've never confronted before the helicopters being back I was quite right very disconcerting the sound of this helicopter is wonderful that was probably half to three chords in there after we set off our distress signals not at this stage of course is rising or falling 50 60 70 feet at a time once we got out onto the skid itself and I was hit in the face by by these winds which is something I can only describe as as ferocious that and the noise was was was just like a-tryin the helicopter puts out a lot of noise whoring anyway but the wind itself was something different hice with the spy from the ocean that's 80 feet high and the wives were just just absolutely fun one of our life life for us we allowed that to float out to the back of the boat and two people at a time floated out behind the yacht and peter davison from le med one doing wonderful job coming down swinging to us into the raft and lifting one person at a time the safety of the helicopter I'm just looking at me as if to say well you know here I am coming getting in they were just totally exhausted the hardest pop is actually getting to the line from itself once I was in the water the helicopter moved back and let out as much cable as I possibly could so I was dragging about 150 foot of cable swimming to the to the lighter part and then physically climbing into the light graph was was quite exhausting for 25 minutes Davidson dragged eight men to safety so the last from the Peter taken up so he was absolutely exhausted sitting on his face and our way up so we swung in the door of the helicopter and was not like said everyone was so tired and exhaust there's a lot of smiles handshakes Peter had the biggest grin on anyone's face you could ever imagine and we were packing like a pile of sardines into a helicopter that you'd normally take to a few less than what we had by the end of the day another 50 sailors had been plucked from the seas and the biggest maritime rescue operation in Australian history was in full swing you

Channel: CYCATV

Views: 427,690

Rating: 4.6821465 out of 5

Keywords: 1998, Sydney, Hobart, Yacht, Race, film, part, 1

Id: wgsp_kHicu8

Length: 24min 34sec (1474 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 03 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/metricrules]

Part 2: https://youtu.be/Z5554FxUXwg

[u/princesskate]

I remember watching the news when it all happened. It was horrible. Every year you have boats pulling out of the race for whatever reason- Last year one of the favorite super maxi's pulled out. And of course you have the occasional rescue needed, but not to this extent.

[u/pm_me_your_wHopper]

dear subaru marketer.

my other truck is a unimog.

my other other truck is a military aircraft.

i am FORBIDDEN from driving on civil roads.

(and most harbours in the western hemisphere...)

[u/Pik000]

I've done the race twice. Last year was amazingly cruisy. NE wind the whole way. 1st time was crazy, we had 55 knot winds and big swells but nothing like the 98 race through.