by Julie Hartwig
August 2005
My first impression of Hamilton Island was that I had stepped into a different world. From the golf buggies that are the island’s principal mode of transport to the uniformed island staff who
seem to be everywhere doing all manner of things, “Hammo” is definitely a world apart.
Add Hahn Premium Race Week to the scenery and the entire experience becomes a real eye-opener. Just walking along the marina arms seeing some of the biggest names in Australian sailing is a real buzz: Alfa Romeo, Seriously Ten, Brindabella, Dekadence, Hardys Secret Men’s Business, Hollywood Boulevard, Inner Circle Rum, Prime Time, Prowler, Wild Oats, UBS Wild Thing, Estate Master, Andrew Short Club Marine, Loki, Team Lexus, Fresh,
Bacardi, Match Point, Wild Joe, Lion New Zealand, to name but a few. The size of some of these boats was truly staggering (Alfa Romeo stops the tape measure at 30 metres!), not to mention how seriously their crews went about their racing. The value of the boats berthed in the marina during race week would have been well over a billion dollars.
Jon and I had gone to Hammo with the intention of finding crew places on a boat, but after a walk around the marina, I realised that these big money yachts would have no place for a novice sailor like me. Then we saw a “crew wanted” notice on the board for a boat called Brindabella II. I knew this boat; she’d been a visitor to TCB on her way north to Hammo. A quick phone call to her skipper and we were on board for the first race.
It was good to crew with someone we knew. Geoff Carrington and his crew were all great guys. Skipper, Roger, and helmsman/foredeck crew, Anthony, were both very experienced sailors, and a look at the bulkhead beside Brindabella’s chart table revealed that this boat had quite an impressive pedigree: 4 Sydney-Hobart’s and a Melbourne-Osaka double-handed race, plus countless other races down south.
So, into Hammo Race Week, beginning with the Lindeman Island Race and 15-20 knots of SE breeze and a rather lumpy sea. We hadn’t even made the start line before I began wondering what I’d let myself in for. I had never sailed in such conditions before, let alone in an offshore regatta. A 15-20 knot SE breeze with a lumpy sea in TCB is a flat calm in comparison. Bashing hard to windward as a piece of “rail meat” (downwind I was spinnaker brace trimmer), I began to question my desire to do this regatta. Still, it was interesting to listen to Roger and Anthony discussing tactics. All this talk of VMG (velocity made good), tracks, lee bowing the tide was way over my head. Even more confusing, but fascinating was observing how Roger used a laptop to determine tactics and to track the race, course, tide and current, wind strengths and direction, boat speed, etc.
The first two races were fairly tame, with the second one – the Long Island race – being conducted in conditions more akin to those I was accustomed to in TCB – 10-15 knot SE with a fairly flat sea. This race had a spinnaker start, which was truly amazing, both to see and to be a part of, for the Cruising Division numbered close on 100 boats and there isn’t a lot of room in Dent Passage and every skipper seemed to want the inside track around the top of Dent Island. It was the nautical equivalent of a rugby scrum with all the shouting, biffing and barging as boats called for “water”, buoy room, “starboard”, “come up”, and a lot of other unprintable requests.
The rest of the race was quite tame by comparison, though we had a skirmish with the boys on Sunfast One who wanted the bit of water we were sailing on, and when we finally acquired it, they decided they wanted it back again and came at us from the other side. Nice boys! We were in the top ¼ of the fleet when we rounded White Rock, but a wrong tactical call sent us out into the current and we slid down the field as the wind died and we ended up finishing a frustrating 12 minutes outside the 5.00 pm cut-off finishing time.
For race three, however, the wind “came in” – 20 knot SE with a 1.5 m sea. It sounded tame enough, but I had never been out in a 1.5 m sea, let alone racing. Another hard bash to windward and it definitely was “one hand for the boat”. I thought things would get easier once we turned downwind. WRONG! Downwind turned out to be a very shy kite run across the Whitsunday Passage to Pine Island. I’d never been sailing with a kite over 15 knots before, let alone in a 1.5 m sea. It was a real white-knuckle ride. With Anthony wrestling with the helm, driving Brindabella like a race car lock to lock, she surfed down waves, leaving a roaring wake like a power boat, cracking 11.4 knots on the log, a speed we later learned equated to an amazing 17.8 knots across the ground! This happened when we were spat out of one of the notorious tidal eddies at the bottom of Pine Island.
This particular point of the race I found quite terrifying. When the horizon disappears behind the crests of waves; when you find yourself looking up at breaking wave crests, you know you’re in big seas. I named this particular part of the course The Washing Machine because that was what it looked like: white water everywhere, big, breaking waves, and the roaring noise of the sea. I had always found downwind sailing very quiet compared to bashing upwind where there is a lot of wind noise. Not here. The sea noise was incredible.
Race three finished with a really nice two-sail reach back across the Passage that had Brindabella fairly romping along on her favourite point of sail, cracking 7 knots on the log. It was on this leg that a couple of sounding whales crossed our track, passing ahead of us by no more than a boat length. A really amazing sight. I had never seen humpbacks whales that close up in the wild before.
After that race, I considered not racing again, but like any sucker for punishment, I fronted up for race 4 only to discover that the forecast had bumped up to 20-25 knot SE with 2m seas. The ride out to the start was a rollercoaster ride all by itself. The mind boggled at what the race itself would offer.
I was appointed starting timekeeper from this race, which thankfully distracted me from all the frantic pre-start manoeuvring, not to mention the sea state. We made a cracker of a start, bashed hard to windward again, followed by another white-knuckle kite run (which thankfully was a little squarer downwind, though with even bigger seas through the Washing Machine), and concluded with another nice galloping reach across the Passage to the finish.
After a lay-day, we fronted up for race 5. The forecast was pretty ugly – 25-30 knot SE with 2.5-3m seas. After I heard that, I considered getting off the boat, but as starting timekeeper, I had a job to do and so went. A downwind start in Dent Passage promised plenty of chaos and delivered. We opted to forego the kite, going with just heady (we’d opted to go with the No 2) and main. The expected crush and verbal free-for-all occurred around the buoys at
the top of Dent, accompanied with much boom fending, and – believe it or not – a whale sounding right across the course into the middle of the fleet. Heart-in-mouth stuff.
The seas in the Passage were everything forecast. It turned out to be a long, cold, wet bash down to Sidney Island, with Brindabella regularly taking waves over her weather rail and the
cockpit shin deep in water. If you’ve seen photos of crew huddling on the weather rail in storm-tossed Sydney-Hobarts, that was us. Not nice. It took us three hours to bash up to Sidney Island, followed by a twenty minute reach along to Ann, then – horror or horrors – up
went the kite (in 25 knots of breeze!) and it took us ¾ of an hour to surf back to Dent Passage, with Brindabella cracking 11 knots again and averaging 9 as she became an 11 ton surfboard. More white-knuckle stuff.
Enter race 6, the Molle Island Race and the last of the regatta. After the previous day’s nautical shenanigans, I thought I had seen the worst that could be thrown at me. WRONG! Again. The forecast was for 30-35 knot SE with rain squalls to 40 knots and 2-2.5m seas. Wonderful! As if that wasn’t enough, it was a downwind Dent Passage start, which ordinarily would mean kites. I had already decided that I was consorting with lunatics. If these guys decided to start with a kite, I could see it getting shredded in very short order. But no, thankfully, commonsense prevailed and they decided to leave the kite in the bag and go with a No 1 heady and a full main.
We made another cracker of a start. Some brave – or foolhardy – souls decided to go with kites, but once around the top of Dent, kite after kite shredded itself and pretty soon only one boat was left with a kite, albeit a very small, heavy one that they managed to carry all the way up to the top of the Molles. Brindabella two-sail reached across the passage, making 7 and often cracking 8 knots. A goose-winged dead run up the Molle Channel followed, then it was around the top of North Molle, douse the poled heady and take a couple of turns around the furler, reef the main and hang on. It was wet, cold and very heavy going. When the first squall approached, a second reef was taken in the main and more heady was furled. The forecast 40 knots came true.
For the next two hours we bashed and tacked our way across the Passage. One tack went horribly wrong when Brindabella was caught by a gusting windshift just as she was paying off on the new tack. The heady backwinded, and unable to sheet the sail in, Anthony called for another tack. I was caught on what became the leeward rail and came as close to being swept overboard as I every care to go as the leeward rail disappeared under water, taking me along – hanging onto to a life line for all I was worth - for a very wet, cold ride.
Well and truly soaked, cold and spooked, I spent what remained of that race, wrapped in a towel, huddling in the dog box, just wanting the race to be over so I could get off the boat.
So, that was Hammo ’05. Brindabella ended up with an impressive race series – 16 – DNF – 13 – 22 – 26 – 28. With our worse result dropped (the DNF) we finished 18th overall, beating a lot of boats we had no business being in front of.
I enjoyed timekeeping at the start of the races and was glad I was able to contribute to sailing the boat by helping to get her over the line well: 6 races; 6 good starts. Can’t ask for more than that. I developed a better understanding of how to trim the spinnaker pole/brace. This had not originally been my role on the boat. I was appointed to assist with the mainsheet and boom brake and be a general dogsbody. But I never went anywhere near the mainsheet or the boom brake and naturally gravitated to what I knew best – manning a winch, though in heavy weather upwind I was well out of my depth because the pressure on the heady sheets was more than I could handle. Apart from Race 2, I found myself sailing in conditions that continually placed me well outside my comfort zone. By the end of the regatta, 30 knot + winds and 2m seas were an accepted part of racing now that I had been “blooded” in ocean racing. Sailing in TCB will seem placid in comparison.
There were many memorable moments. The Pine Island tidal eddies and the 2.5 m washing machine-like seas they created. The tidal races and overfalls that could stop a boat dead, turn her this way or that, then spit her out leaving her facing the way she had come. The turquoise colour of the water, prevalent even on cloudy days. Seeing kites blow out or wrap around furlers, and boats rounding up and broaching.
And then there was the post-race atmosphere on the island. The HI yacht club was the hub of the après sailing activities, with live bands playing on the stage outside the club and $10 dinners served from the buffet outside. There is a definite “yachtie” style of dress in the sailing fraternity. For men – deckies (often weathered and worn without socks); knee-length cargo/board shorts; polo shirts adorned with some kind of sailing logo/writing – usually identifying which boat the wearer is associated with; baseball cap; and sunnies worn either on the face or on top of the head or cap; fleece vests at night. Women usually wear the same except they tend to wear shorter shorts.
I don’t know that I’ll get the chance to do another Hammo, but this one was certainly a fantastic experience.