Smaller vessels with two-man crews are competing for the first time. But, thanks to their use of autopilot, they can’t win the top trophy.
There’s a beautiful simplicity to two-handed offshore sailboat racing: two sailors, one boat and a lot of blue.
For many offshore sailors, participating in the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race aboard a fully crewed boat is a serious undertaking. But the 18 two-handed teams competing in this year’s edition of this 628-nautical-mile race are sharing an entire team’s worth of adventure — and responsibility — with just one other person.
In 2019, the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, which organizes the race, announced a new two-handed division for the 2020 race. The decision was driven by a global surge in the popularity of short-handed sailing and the prospect of a mixed two-person keelboat offshore event at the Paris 2024 Olympics in Paris.
But the 2020 Sydney Hobart race was canceled because of the pandemic, and then the International Olympic Committee did not add the keelboat event to the Paris Games.
Still, the Sydney Hobart’s newest class has become popular and accounts for 19 percent of the 94-boat fleet at the starting line on Sunday.
“I am a big fan of the double-handed sailing concept, and it is great to see the Rolex Sydney to Hobart organizers embracing this side of the sport,” said Stu Bannatyne of New Zealand, an experienced offshore sailor who has won the Volvo Ocean Race four times. “The race for sure has inherent risks as we all well know, and double-handing it just means the crew needs to be very aware of the limitations of themselves and the boat.”
Wendy Tuck, a veteran of 13 Sydney Hobart races, is on a two-handed boat this year.
“I wanted a new adventure,” said Tuck, the only female sailor to have won an around-the-world race as skipper. Tuck is sailing with her co-skipper Campbell Geeves aboard Speedwell, a Beneteau 34.7. “It’s the smallest boat that I’ve gone south on,” she said, referring to Hobart. She added that while she has done a lot of short-handed sailing, she is still new to two-handed racing.
Rob Gough, a veteran of the 2019 race and an accomplished dinghy sailor, said it was the challenge that attracted him to two-handed racing. He and John Saul, a veteran of the 1998 race that killed six sailors and sank five boats, are sailing their Akilaria Class 40, Sidewinder.
“We both like being really involved,” Gough said, adding that with two-handed racing both sailors get to be “skipper, cook, trimmer, tactician, radio operator and navigator.”
Serious offshore sailors often say that races are really won during the boat preparation before the race. Two-handed sailing is no different, except that there are fewer crew members to tackle the details.
Given the race’s tough reputation, organizers require teams to complete qualifications, including first-aid certification, radio-operator training and survival-at-sea instruction. Aboard fully crewed boats, only some of the sailors need to complete this training. In the two-handed division, both skippers must fulfill these requirements, in addition to completing previous (and specific) offshore races and a 24-hour passage together on their boats.
Then there is the task of outfitting a boat to potentially withstand more than 50-knot winds and massive seas.
“The boat has done 30,000-odd miles of two-handed sailing, so it’s all set up,” said Rod Smallman, who is racing aboard Maverick, a Jeanneau Sun Fast 3600, with his co-skipper Leeton Hulley. This is Smallman’s second Sydney Hobart race and Hulley’s seventh. “Once it’s set up, it’s all tinkering and maintenance.”
One decision about two-handed racing equipment has been controversial.
Autopilot systems, which steer a boat to a specified compass course or wind angle, free the crew to trim sails, perform other duties or rest. Unlike fully crewed boats, two-handed teams can use autopilots in this year’s race.
However, the yacht club announced last year that two-handed teams would not qualify for the Tattersall Cup, which is awarded to the race’s overall corrected-time (handicap) winner. The two-handed division is competing for its own trophy.
“We need to better understand the level of advantage that autopilots might provide to yachts of differing types,” Noel Cornish, the club’s commodore, who officiates for the club, said last year. “The status and prestige of the Tattersall Cup in world sailing requires a thorough understanding of all the issues before any new division is granted eligibility.”
Not surprisingly, some two-handed teams were not pleased.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I was really disappointed that we’re not racing for the Tattersall,” Tuck said, noting that some crewed boats use powered winches to trim their sails and hydraulic systems to swing their canting keels. “But at the end of the day, I’m really happy we can enter as a two-handed boat.”
Smallman was also disappointed and noted that other international races allowed these teams to compete for the same top-shelf trophy as fully crewed boats.
Unlike human drivers, whose ability to steer a precise course typically wanes after 20 or 30 minutes, autopilots never tire. But Matt Eeles, product director for the autopilot manufacturer B&G, said that when sailing in big waves, autopilots were purely reactionary, not predictive, as they cannot see ahead or behind the yacht. “I think a human would outperform an autopilot in these conditions,” he said.
Some high-budget round-the-world sailing teams have recently developed autopilots that incorporate sophisticated gyro-stabilized compasses, secondary processing computers, custom software and sensor networks, but this is not the technology that Gough, Smallman and Tuck are using.
“It’s a bit rich to suggest that autopilots will give us an advantage to fully crewed boats,” Gough said, explaining that Sidewinder has a B&G autopilot.
Critically, the race crosses Bass Strait, a section of about 160 nautical miles that separates southern Australia and Tasmania. Average water depth is roughly 200 feet. Couple these shallow waters with the generally south-flowing East Australia Current and the strong southerly weather fronts — “busters” in race parlance — that oppose the current, and the seas can, and regularly do, become ferocious.
“If you’ve got the skills to put your boat where the wind is, it’s going to beat having a better autopilot every single day of the week,” Smallman said, adding that he still planned to let the autopilot drive whenever possible. “Boat handling. Seamanship. There’s just a list as long as your arm that’s going to outperform the importance of a pilot.”
Other two-handed skippers, including Tuck and Geeves, also plan to predominantly use their autopilot and focus on sail trim and tactics.
Regardless, sleep deprivation is a concern for two-handed teams in the multiday race.
“We’ll get into our rest cycle two or three hours after the start,” said Gough, explaining that he and Saul would alternate between sailing and resting every two hours.
Smallman and Hulley plan to run a similar schedule, weather depending, with roughly 15-minute crossovers at the below-decks navigation table, looking at their charts, weather forecasts and their tactical racing software. “We sort of tend to play little games,” Smallman said. “We might try to make a mile on the boat in front of us within our shifts.”
Then there is changing sails or reducing the amount of sail area alone or with the other sailor. “Getting the spinnaker down is the toughest part,” Tuck said. While more modern boats have spinnakers that can be furled into snakelike rolls using winches and then lowered in a controlled manner, Speedwell is old-school.
“We have to get the spinnaker down while it’s still set,” she said, describing wrestling with the huge, still-inflated sail. “It’s a big challenge.”
This challenge will be greatly magnified if the weather turns serious.
While the bigger, faster boats can sometimes out sail the worst storms, Tuck expects to see at least two busters en route to Hobart. “Hopefully no more,” she said. “The Hobart can be so rough, and we’re in a tiny little boat.”
Others note that, while the changing climate has recently delivered relatively mild Sydney Hobart races, all bull markets end. “There hasn’t been a rough race for a few years,” Gough said. “We’re well and truly due in for one.”
Should that happen, it will be seamanship, experience and preparation, not autopilots, that will dictate the results. “It’s all in the wind gods and each team’s decisions,” Tuck said. “And that word, luck.”
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