All At Sea? Tail Enders Have Been That Way For Six Days

Sydney Morning Herald

Wednesday January 1, 1997

BOB ROSS

As you read this, possibly recovering from last night, spare a thought for the tail ender in the Sydney-Hobart race - still at sea after six days and not expected to finish until tomorrow.

David Hannah, a 22-year-old Buchanan 35, is being sailed by the Jones family, from Port Adelaide Yacht Club. Yesterday afternoon it was off Tasmania, 175 miles from the finish.

Although Morning Glory finished on Sunday morning in record time, the smaller and slower boats in the race have made slow progress towards the finish over the past two days. Another 17 boats have retired.

The row continues about the amount of time granted to fourth-placed BZW Challenge for investigating a flare sighting in Bass Strait.

Ray Roberts, skipper of BZW Challenge, is furious that his team had only 33 minutes cut from their time instead of the two hours he claimed the search cost him.

Yesterday, Cruising Yacht Club of Australia Commodore, Peter Bush, confirmed the overall handicap winner and winner of the International Measurement System division B was Ausmaid, the Farr 47 owned by Giorgio Gjergja, of Melbourne.

Immediately after, Roberts announced he would lodge an appeal through the CYCA, which, if granted, would see his boat replace Ausmaid. Any appeal, dealt with by a Yachting Association of NSW panel of rules experts, may take weeks.

Roberts said the formula the protest committee had used disadvantaged BZW Challenge because it had been travelling faster than the average race speed, at almost 18 knots, when it stopped racing to investigate the flare sighting.

BZW Challenge's navigator, American Dee Smith, said: "We were given 33 minutes based on the loss of 9.6 miles divided by 17.4 knots, which was the speed at the time and not the average speed of the race or the average speed of our last 9.6 miles which is probably the most accurate way of doing it.

"We would have been 9.6 miles ahead and we would have won the race easily, by an hour.

"The system they used prejudices any boat that goes back to help anybody while they are travelling faster than the average speed to the finish."

Roberts said two or three crewmen on BZW Challenge had confirmed the sighting of the white or greenish flare fired in Bass Strait about 11.10pm on the second night of the race and another yacht, Maglieri Wines, had also later reported seeing it.

He said the radio relay vessel, Young Endeavour, had confirmed that BZW Challenge should stop, proceed in the direction of the flare and search.

While BZW Challenge was returning towards where the flare had been seen, Ausmaid, which had been four miles behind, crossed about 200m to 400m ahead. Ausmaid's crew members said they did not see the flare or BZW Challenge.

"It took them 20 minutes to catch us," Smith said. "We hunted around for another 20 or 30 minutes, re-started the race and passed them again and beat them in by 30 minutes."

The first three boats in the overall results announced yesterday - Ausmaid, Warwick Miller's Reichel/Pugh 66 Exile and Roger Hickman's Lyons 41 Atara - all lost significant time at the start for being premature starters.

Exile won division A from Morning Glory (Hasso Plattner) and the new Murray 60 Sydney (Charles Curran).

The Hick 30 Atria, owned by Gilbert Ford, from Southport, won division C; Abracadabra (James Mark Anthony) from Middle Harbour division D; and the Tasmanian Huon Chief (Andrew Hay) division E.