Line Honours Calling For Super Shockwave
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday December 18, 2000
If you were looking to frame a market for line honours in next week's Sydney to Hobart yacht race, then the 83-foot maxi Shockwave would be an unbackable favourite after its performance in the Telstra Cup.
Shockwave, owned and skippered by Sydney businessman Neville Crichton, has been astoundingly quick in conditions not ideally suited to the maxi.
It was never beaten in any of its races, indeed no-one could get within five minutes of the boat.
Only when handicaps were calculated was it brought back to the pack. So on corrected time, it was second in its division behind Stephen Ainsworth's new Swan 48 Loki. But Shockwave will not be chasing handicap results in the Hobart race.
Crichton wants the line-honours win and, on form, is a big chance of getting it.
The only proviso on Shockwave's performance is that most of its line-honours rivals didn't do the Telstra series.
Most carry water ballast and in the round-the-buoys racing, that is a feature of the Telstra Cup they can't use to maximise their performance.
Shockwave is conventionally ballasted although incredibly light by virtue of being almost entirely made of carbon fibre.
It is this material which gives it its impressive power-to-weight ratio.
So in the Hobart race, expect challenges to come from any one of the Volvo 60s, Nicorette and Sean Langman's Xena.
Certainly Crichton rates Nicorette as a big chance.
Yesterday's racing had a slow start with races delayed for more than two hours while race officials waited for the wind to swing into the north. It eventually settled and at the end of the day, the fleet had about 15knots of breeze.
The IMS division went right down to the wire with Howard De Torres's new IMX 40 Nips-n-Tux just shading last year's Hobart handicap winner Yendys, steered by Geoff Ross.
Ross is hoping for back-to back wins as De Torres has not entered the race to Hobart, and will sail in the Pittwater to Coffs Harbour race starting on January 2. On form, he is a hot favourite to take that race.
The Farr 40 Australian championship was another close-fought series.
Unluckiest man in the series was American Philippe Kahn with his new boat Pegasus.
He won five of the seven races but still couldn't beat world champion John Calvert-Jones in Southern Star.
Kahn had mast trouble in one race and didn't finish, and in the other he was over at the start and lost all chance of a good result when he had to do a penalty turn. Kahn was aided on his boat by Mark Reynolds, the American who won gold in Sydney in the Star class.
Kahn and Calvert-Jones will clash again next year at the Farr 40 Worlds in Cowes, England.
Kahn and Calvert-Jones keep their rivalry to the water, and when he had mast problems, it was Calvert-Jones who lent him one of his. Kahn was delighted, confessing that Calvert-Jones's mast was faster than his old one.
Now that the Telstra is over, the Hobart crews will spend the rest of the week getting their boats ready for the race south.
Last year, the Volvo 60 Nokia set a new race record by getting to Hobart in less than two days.
To do this, it sailed in a weather window unlike any seen for the past 25 years, and this year's race is expected to be more traditional with southerly fronts giving the fleet a bit of a rough time across Bass Strait.
© 2000 Sydney Morning Herald