Seven miles down on the first night. That is where Smuggler's line honours campaign began, after a tactical call to start outside the fleet backfired almost immediately off the Sydney Heads.
Skipper Tim Davis and tactician Steve McConaghy had used that exact strategy to win on the same track the previous year. This time, the fleet found clear air a hundred metres outside them and the TP52s built a lead that looked, briefly, decisive. "Before we knew it, we'd basically dropped seven miles behind on our main competitors, so we had a lot of work to do on the first night," Davis said.
They did the work. By the finish, Smuggler had converted that deficit into a fifteen-to-twenty-mile lead over the other TP52s, though running at the front brought its own complications. "Being the lead boat, and this is the first time we were in that position, you don't have anyone else to follow as a good indicator, so we found a lot of the holes on the course," Davis said.
For McConaghy, crossing first meant something more personal. Nearly forty years he'd been chasing line honours on this race. "I've been trying for nearly 40 years to win this on Line Honours, and finally got there," he said. He credited slick sail-handling through a tricky race, a stable core crew built over three to four years, and first-timer Adam Minoprio, who went one from one on debut.
Overall honours on corrected time went to Sean Langman's Back 2 Black. The GP42 spent much of day one at the back of the fleet.
"We had a tough day the first day, we didn't seem to be able to get out of our own way, sitting last for a while," Langman said. Light displacement made the difference as conditions eased. "These boats are pretty light, they change gears well, and downwind, they hold their time."
He had plenty to say about the race itself. "This has to be the warmest edition of the race, and I don't remember a race where the night was so warm and the day was so glorious. A glorious finish, sunshine, running conditions, what more can you ask for." Langman spread credit across the crew, singling out navigator Belinda Tayler on her first go in that role, the father-son Braidwood team with young Eamon racing his first overnight, long-suffering crewmate Josh Alexander, and the shore team. He closed by dedicating the win to his late father, who called Southport home.
Disko Trooper's result was hard to argue with. Co-skippers Jules Hall and Alex Knight finished second overall on IRC and swept IRC Division 3, Corinthian IRC, Corinthian PHS, Double-Handed IRC and Double-Handed PHS. Five divisions. On a boat they were sailing two-up.
It nearly unravelled five hours from the finish. A wave caught the boat while trimming, tangling the mainsheet around the tiller, triggering a round-up and wrapping the spinnaker tightly around the forestay three or four times. "The first thing that goes through your mind is, we're so close to the finishing line, we've done really well, and we're about to chuck the whole thing in the bin," the pair said. They sorted it without drama, then shifted focus from chasing Back 2 Black to holding second. "No shouting, no finger-pointing, just deal with it," Hall affirmed. "You can't go offshore and be highly competitive, pushing the limits, and not have something go wrong. You just have to get on with it."
When things were going well, the racing was something else entirely. "Absolute champagne sailing, bright moon, whales, dolphins, it was absolutely spectacular," they said.
Third overall went to Chris and Lockie Dare's Ambition, capping a season built around getting to know a new boat. Dare was candid about the battle with Langman's crew. "It was super tight racing. They managed to get away off the coast, and at one point it was just hard to peg them back from then." On how a GP42 hangs with boats ten feet longer: "The boats are quite well suited to hanging on to the 52s in reaching and running conditions below fifteen knots, which we saw a lot of. At times we felt we were equally as quick as them."
