Sam Haynes and his "Celestial" crew are the overall winners of the 77th Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race. For some of the crew, the triumph comes as welcome redemption after last year's disappointment, when a rule violation cost them the win and dropped them to second place. "It means everything to me. Especially after last year. It's a massive high - huge for me and the crew," said skipper Sam Haynes, who is also Vice Commodore of the host Cruising Yacht Club of Australia.
The overall winner was drawn in Germany and was once sailed by Jochen Schümann and Boris Herrmann
Haynes' declaration of love for his sport: "Being involved in sailing and ocean racing and winning the Tattersall Cup is the greatest thing." Haynes had nothing but good things to say about his Judel/Vrolijk design built by McConaghy in 2011, the "Audi All4One" once also sailed by Jochen Schümann and even Boris Herrmann: "This boat is a weapon. It sails on a par with the best 52-foot IRC boats in the world."
The winning team for the 628 nautical mile race from Sydney to Hobart in Tasmania also included Australian professional sailor David Chapman, who is known to sailors in this country as a strong NRV league player. Chapman had contributed to the historic league triple of the North German Regatta Club this year, winning the club championship, the Sailing Champions League and the cup.
"The best TP52 fleet we have ever sailed in"
An impressive twelve TP52 bullets took part in this year's 77th Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race. "It was the best TP52 fleet we've ever sailed in," enthused Haynes about the attractive field in which the TPs were constantly playing cat and mouse with each other.
The TP52 "Gweilo", also designed by Judel/Vrolijk, sailed to second place in the narrowly lost battle for the Tattersall Cup in the overall IRC standings. The "Gweilo" crew was only a quarter of an hour behind "Celestial" at the finish line according to the calculated time. Maximilian Klink's bot 52 "Caro" came third in the IRC. Her crew, in turn, was only two minutes behind her rival "Gweilo" after the calculated time.
The eight-strong "Orione" team had fought their way through the stormy winds to 88th place in the field of the 109 yachts that had originally started. The Berlin brothers and co-skippers Axel and Peter Baumgartner mastered the challenging intermediate phase with their Grand Soleil 45 brilliantly and were already approaching the finish line on Thursday afternoon German time. The team sent this short interim report from the sea on Thursday morning:
Greetings from the Berlin "Orione" crew: "We survived the storm"
"From the bow rising steeply into the sky to the flying spray over the first spreader to the cockpit full of water, everything was there. The 'Orione' set his own record of 212 nautical miles (editor's note: in 24 hours), more than half of which only under storm jib G4. Other participants were unlucky and broke their main boom, forestay or batten bearing. Unfortunately, we were too exhausted at dawn to keep our foot on the accelerator. In the meantime, we were probably even fourth in our division. After less than twelve hours, the sea is peaceful again, as if nothing had happened. We're sailing off the Tasmanian coast in 9 knots of wind at just under 6 knots and still have 120 nautical miles to go."
