Edition number 80 of the Bluewater Classic: LawConnect has won the last two Australian regattas, Master Lock Comanche seems favorite this year. The decisive phase, as always, will come not far from arriving in Tasmania
The start of the Sydney-Hobart 2025 – which for some years now has been technically called the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race for sponsor reasons – is one of the symbols of offshore sailing and the southern summer. It invariably starts at 1pm local time on 26 December – Boxing Day in Anglo-Saxon countries – with the large fleet, this year of 142 boats, leaving Sydney bay: 99% full, with beautiful sunshine and light winds, followed by thousands of curious people on shore who are having a picnic in the meantime, dozens of boats around to accompany the first miles of the race. The number of entries, 38 boats higher than in 2024, makes it the second largest fleet of the 21st century, second only to the 157 boats in 2019: this is explained by the fact that this is the 80th edition.
sydney-hobart heaven or hell
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At times, the race towards Hobart – the capital of Tasmania – turns out to be a not particularly demanding 628-mile sail, a calm ocean navigation from North to South over a distance that in the Mediterranean is comparable to the route between Venice and Messina. But it happens that sometimes the strong wind from the South transforms the race into a long and exhausting beat against a strong sea, and other times the wind from the North makes it a mad sprint, almost always gliding over the waves. And then there is the legendary passage of the Bass Strait, where the race is often decided shortly before arriving in Tasmania. But more easily, Bass Strait – due to the combination of intense wind and strong currents – can become extreme and put crews in difficulty. This is how it went in 1998, in the “cursed” edition: a devastating storm in the strait (sea force 12, with 65 knots and gusts of 80), caused six deaths, with five boats sunk, seven abandoned and 55 sailors recovered in what was the largest operation ever carried out in Australia in peacetime, with 35 aircraft and 27 naval units. But it’s not just the nightmare of the strait: in 2024, on the first night of the regatta, with 35 knots of wind and force 4 seas (not an unusual condition in those waters), two Australian sailors lost their lives and another was miraculously saved, thrown overboard, thanks to his personal tracking device.
sydney-hobart, the rules
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At Sydney-Hobart you compete both in real time (to conquer what the English call Line Honor and remains engraved in the roll of honor) and on corrected time, which allows relatively small boats to win the race. This year there are 20 crews en double (i.e. with two people on board) and the IRC Cruiser-Racer category was introduced. It must be said that in edition n. a cruise vessel) and SHK Scallywag. The weather forecast doesn’t seem to suggest the possibility of breaking the regatta record: it belongs to the 100 foot LDV Comanche which triumphed in 2017 taking 33 hours, 15 minutes and 24 seconds, at almost 19 knots on average which for a traditional monohull (i.e. without foil) is incredible. But at the Bluewater Classic – as sailors from the Antipodes call it, thinking of the fact that it was invented in 1945 by the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, with only nine members at the start – surprises are lurking.
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