Pittwater LIfe December 2019 Issue

Photo: Rolex/Studio Borlenghi
Jibe Talking Story
We talk to some of the
Pittwater skippers and
crew competing in the
75 th Sydney to Hobart
Yacht Race – some for
the first time, some
for the umpteenth.
Story by Ros Burton
Special Feature
Few could have imagined
that the Cruising Yacht
Club of Australiaorganised
Sydney to Hobart
Yacht Race which heard
the starter’s gun for the
first time in 1945 with only
nine entrants in its lineup,
would 75 years later be
acknowledged as one of the
world’s most challenging
yacht races.
This year, a billowing fleet
of 170 boats will compete,
most with strong lead-ups
and preparations.
It’s a Friday afternoon in
October and Mark Richards,
the 52-year-old skipper of
‘Wild Oats XI’, the 100-foot
super maxi owner by the
Oatley Family, is at the Royal
Prince Alfred Yacht Club.
Since 2005, Richards has
skippered ‘Wild Oats XI’ in 14
Sydney to Hobart races and
the boat has won line honours
nine times, and the triple
(line honours, corrected time
and a new race record) twice.
With him is helmsman
Chris Links. The same age
as Richards, he grew up
at Taylors Point, has been
sailing since he was eight
and completed 15 Sydney to
Hobarts. “Richo” and he did
a shipwright apprenticeship
together in the early 1980s, he
tells me, and have sailed with
or against one another ever
since.
In 2016, the year that the
boat’s hydraulic keel ram
broke, Links was down
below. “I had just gone
down and climbed into my
bunk, and the boat tipped
over,” he recounts. ‘Wild
Oats’ withdrew from the
race, as it had been forced
to the previous year, when
the mainsail tore. “We were
doing 25 knots downwind
and sailed into a 40-knot
southerly. It was nighttime
and we were pinned down,
and we ripped the main
trying to get it down.”
But Links admits that
the most devastating race
occurred in 2017 when ‘Wild
Oats’ was given an hour’s
penalty, so despite having
beaten ‘Comanche’, skippered
by James Spithill, ‘Wild Oats’
ultimately lost the race, and
the record for the fastest race
time.
“We dealt with it by doing
a better job next year,” Links
says. Indeed, ‘Wild Oats’ won
line honours in 2018.
The ‘Wild Oats’ crew came
together from all over the
world for a 10-day training
camp at the beginning of
November, before competing
in the Cabbage Tree Island
Race.
30 DECEMBER 2019
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