SAIL IQ Racing Team's Ākonga tied up in Sydney last Tuesday (14 October), eight days after slipping her lines at Westhaven. Four days later, she started her first race in Australian waters, the Tollgate Island Race.
“[We're] very excited to be starting our first race in Sydney on Friday night,” owner Nick Roberts said. “We have the six Rolex Sydney Hobart race crew together for the first time.”
The Westhaven send-off was a rainbow over the marina the evening before departure. By the following night, with a number of hours under sail, navigator Andrew Hall was “happy in his work” off Kawau Island, with Cape Reinga still to round before the left turn for Sydney. Two days into the Tasman, Roberts was posting about a “magic bluebird day” on a reach.
The Tollgate took the fleet 130 miles south out of Sydney and 130 back. It was the boat’s first Cruising Yacht Club of Australia Blue Water Pointscore race and the start of her build-up to the Hobart. Roberts is originally from Sydney and has made his home in Auckland, so he has a foot in both camps.
We sat down with Roberts and Hall in Auckland before they left. They talked about a production cruiser-racer run along professional lines and how they had modified and improved Ākonga to deal with the racing component of life on water. Almost all of that work was done on this side of the Tasman.
“We made a conscious decision to do all that work in New Zealand,” Hall said. “We had the contacts, we had the networks here.”
Built for the bad stuff
Originally expecting to depart Westhaven in late September, the delivery was pushed back while the team reworked Ākonga’s heavy-weather setup. There were changes aloft and new hardware on deck. The new heavy-weather jib borrows from Grand Prix practice by sharing the load between the stay and the sail.
“It’s taken a little bit of engineering to get to that point where we’re happy,” Roberts said. “And that’s meant we’ve had to build a team of the best people in New Zealand.” In practice, that meant rig engineers, a sailmaker, a rigger and a boat builder, with Hall herding them.
The rig came out, was re-engineered and went back in with new wire. “We know where the weaknesses are and what we can do with it,” Roberts said. Hall put it more simply: “I’m really confident about the rig.”
A lot of this came out of the Three Kings race. On the last night home, Hall reckons they saw the sort of conditions you’d expect in Bass Strait on the way to Tasmania. “We changed a few things in the programme after that,” he said, right down to fitting bigger primary winches.
They’ve also built in spares for the things that end campaigns. Lose a main or genoa halyard and there’s a way to keep going. Hobart’s safety requirements are strict, so engineers have inspected and signed off the keel and keel bolts. The rudder came out during the year so the bearings and stock could be checked, and the engine had another service in the week we spoke.
That engine carries more importance than on most boats. There’s no solar aboard, so diesel charges everything, including a power-hungry Starlink Mini feeding a PredictWind DataHub. “If you’ve got no power, then you’ve got no radio,” Roberts said. “Which means you’ve got no safety. Which means you’ve got no navigator.”
Paying for the bowsprit
Kiwi-designed boats are mostly set up to go fast, not to rate well under handicap. Ākonga, a German-branded Dehler 41, is built as a dual-purpose cruiser/racer designed by Judel/Vrolijk to bridge high performance under ORC and IRC rules with comfortable family or coastal cruising. But like all racing teams, “we just want to make the boat go faster,” Hall said.
But IRC has its own formula. The big bowsprit cost them, and one sail had to come out of the inventory altogether. “It was hammering our rating,” Roberts said. “That’ll stay in Sydney.”
Roberts told us that New Zealand IRC measurer Martin “Irish” Hannan spent hours with the crew, explaining what each decision would do to the number. Hall describes it as having a rating team alongside the engineering one, and he’s under no illusions about the opposition. “The Australians eat and breathe that for breakfast.”
The headsails are membrane with structured luffs. Beyond that, the crew talk only of “a couple of secret weapons”. They chose to use a tired 2022-dated main to do the delivery; the new sails come out for the Sydney races so the crew can learn them before Boxing Day without breaking anything.
Hall points to the history of Hobart retirements: “Mains are normally the ones that stop the campaign.”
Form in the Gulf
Roberts has been racing Ākonga shorthanded since 2022, and she left home in good form. We covered his Hobart build-up through the SSANZ Lewmar Triple Series earlier in the year.
The second race of the Lewmar Series in August confirmed they were on the right track with their boat modifications. Ākonga sailed the first run conservatively, then hunted down the boats that had got away. She won the second division by a mere two seconds on corrected time over Niksen and finished ahead of everything in the first and second division. A fortnight later, in the third race of the Lewmar Series, she won her division again after a close tussle with Katana.
Robert’s sign-off after that one: “We’re off to do the Hobart next (but crewed!)”
Six aboard
There will be six crew aboard. Roberts and Hall, are joined by Max Livingston who is Robert's long-standed two-handed sailing partner. The bow team is younger. Ryan Mills, who did the Three Kings race on Ākonga, is on the bow. Marc Michel (of Niksen by Teammichel), a veteran offshore yachtsman with extensive bluewater and short-handed racing experience across the globe joins the team. Left to Hall, it might have been five. “For every person on the boat, you’ve got 200 kgs,” he said, once food, water and gear are counted.
But the six crew share 22 Sydney Hobart campaigns between them. Roberts calls it “a terrific mix of experience and youthful energy.”
Friday was the first time all six will race together.
Fed, watered and asleep
Roberts spends as much time on the crew as on the boat. He wants strict watches, buddy pairs within each watch, proper handovers and regular briefings from Hall on where the boat is going and what sail changes might be coming.
Hydration is close to an obsession, and Max is the reason. On the Round North Island Race, Roberts realised his 74-year-old co-skipper wasn’t drinking enough. “When we started hydrating him properly, he turned into like a 34-year-old again.”
Mark has found a contractor for fresh boil-in-the-bag meals. There’s an oven aboard, which counts for a lot at sea, and the toastie maker earned its place on the Three Kings race. Hall has a new pipe cot too, after spending that race being thrown around a small bunk.
Waiting for a southerly
The Pointscore fleet suits Ākonga. A good number of production cruiser-racers, “caravans like my boat,” as Roberts puts it, race the whole series and then the Hobart. Line honours aren’t on the table, but there’ll be plenty of boats to measure themselves against. At the other end of the fleet, two-time winner Alive is chasing a third overall title.
The crew know where their race will be won. “We’re looking forward to the southerly as it comes through and when it’s really nasty,” Hall said. “Because that’s when we’ll perform against those boats.” Give the lighter boats flat water and a breeze to get up on the step, and they’re gone.
Round Australia in 2028, maybe
Roberts and Hall are also looking well past December. They have an accepted expression of interest for the 2028 Round Australia race and are among the first 10 crews, which gets them a voice on the race’s steering committee. What they don’t have yet is the boat, and they’re looking worldwide.
They’re particular about how that gets paid for. “We don’t even use the word sponsor,” Roberts said. What they want are partners who get as much out of it as the campaign does.
It’s shaping up as a busy Australian season, and we’ll follow her through the Pointscore series and down to Hobart. Catch up on all our Sydney to Hobart Race coverage.
