Fatal Storm by Rob Mundle Read Free Book Online

Tasmanian coast and across the often appropriately named Storm Bay where bitterly cold winds can sweep in from the Antarctic region and bring a freezing winter chill to high summer, and finally there’s the test presented by the last stretch, the 11 nautical miles up the Derwent River

    to the finish line. Anywhere on this course the whim of the wind gods can take you from calm to calamity in a flash – even on the river.
    The Sydney to Hobart is an unpredictable race, at times serene at others terrifying. A gentle spinnaker ride down the coast with the sun warming one’s back is like a sleigh ride across smooth new snow. The first light of the new day, where the darkest of nights ever so slowly gives way to dawn’s palette of pastels, is an experience few could forget.
    Roger Hickman, a highly experienced offshore racer and race veteran, sees the appeal of ocean racing in general, and the Hobart race in particular, this way: “Ocean racing takes place in the stadium of life. It’s not as though you’re inside some artificially heated and lit stadium. It’s got all the features of ‘why do people climb Mount Everest’. It’s something you just have to do. There is this wonderful challenge to complete the race and be safe. Thrown in with this is the most romantic environment in the world. You get all the benefits of the wind, the sea, the sun, the moon and the stars plus the spectacle of marine life. It’s all rolled into something that is competitive. It’s the absolute classic situation where man, or woman, is pitted against the elements.
    “It is certainly an ‘on-the-edge’ sport like skydiving, motor racing, football and so many others. You cannot be under the illusion at any time that it is safe. Like any other ‘on-the-edge’ sport, ocean racing can be extremely dangerous. That is an aspect we all accept. Unbridled dangers have always been a vital part of life. Ocean racing delivers those dangers plus moments of beauty that will be with you for the rest of your life.”
    While Mother Nature will always create the rules and decide the result, it’s the competitors, the camaraderie, the teamwork and the stamina which make the race whatit is. For some sailors, like Sydney’s Richard “Sightie” Hammond, you cannot get enough of the Sydney to Hobart. The 1998 race was his 40th start. A record. For him and so many others, Christmas Day is more like Boxing Day eve – the eve of the start of the Hobart. Hammond has a host of Hobart race stories, but the one he recalls with the most clarity is his first race in 1952. It was baptism by fire – or more specifically, ice. He was aboard the aging Tasman schooner Wanderer that year and he remembers that both the yacht and its owner, Eric Massey, were very old.
    “I went for the adventure. To race to Hobart was something just about every young sailor wanted to do. I was one of the lucky few to secure a ride.”
    Hammond thought his initiation was complete when a howling southerly buster with winds gusting up to 40 knots swept across the fleet off the NSW south coast. Massey considered the conditions to be so bad at the height of the storm that he ordered that the yacht ride it out with all sails lowered.
    Worse was to come.
    First it was torment. Wanderer had made such slow progress south that on New Year’s Eve it was caught in a windless hole just off the coast at St Helens, near the north-east corner of Tasmania. The crew could only listen to the celebrations on shore. The torment turned to torture soon after Wanderer entered the appropriately named Storm Bay and was blasted by a wild sou’westerly gale.
    “It was blowing 60 knots, the seas were raging and the spray was near horizontal,” Hammond said. “To say it was bitterly cold was an understatement – there was bloody ice on the mast. Without doubt it was the most memorable Hobart race I have ever done, partly because it was my first and partly because it was so rugged and cold.”
    It wasn’t