When the yachts competing in the Sydney to Hobart glide past our shores next week, one of the boats will have a distinct South-Coast flavour.
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Pelagic Magic, a Beneteau 40.7, will have four crew members from the South Coast, including skipper Simon Dunlop from Batemans Bay and Sailing Master Graeme Dunlop.
Also part of the crew are Casey’s Beach sailor Shane Connelly and Sam and Hugh McDonald from Ulladulla. The remainder of the crew come from Sydney, Canberra, and Ireland.
Skipper Simon Dunlop said the boat has Sydney to Hobart experience.
“It’s one of the smallest boats in the fleet, and we’re an amateur crew who’ve been sailing it around Sydney for about four years,” he said. “This will be its third Sydney to Hobart with us, it did three before that as well, so it can get there.
“In the 2015 race we managed to get 20th overall on the handicap, which is pretty impressive for a privately funded, amateur crew.
“In July we did a Sydney to Southport race, and we came third in our division in that. If it’s a downwind race, the big maxis just take off and we never see them again. If we get winds from the south all the time, then we can be very competitive.
“It’s a great crew, and we’ve had the same people sailing together for the past four years. We’ve got about 30 Sydney to Hobarts between us, so there’s a fair bit of experience.”
The race will begin on Boxing Day in Sydney Harbour, make it’s way out of the Sydney Heads and down the South Coast of NSW towards Tasmania.
“Getting out of the heads in Sydney is full on,” Dunlop said. “There’s more than 90 boats, and at that stage they haven’t spread out at all.
“The start line is exciting; it’s one of the best parts of the race. There’s heaps of people around, and it’s just fun.
“The finishes can be frustrating, and the in between bits just depend on the weather.”
The maxi yachts are expected to finish the race in less than two days, but Dunlop thinks his boat will be on the water a little longer than that.
“We expect to arrive in Hobart on December 30,” he said. “At the moment I’m thinking it will be very early in the morning, although we’d like to arrive in daylight because the last few we’ve finished at two in the morning.
“Last time we had a good run down there, and about a mile from the finish the wind died. The last mile took us about two hours, because we were just drifting. It was very frustrating.”
While sailing may be commonly seen as a leisure activity, it’ll be anything but leisure for the ten-man crew.
“On the boat, it’s fairly much go, go, go,” Dunlop said. “During the day we’ll have four hours on and four hours off. During the night we go to three hours.
“You’ve got to manage your fatigue carefully, that’s probably one of the tougher things. You can imagine a small boat being bounced around in the waves, so sleep isn’t the easiest thing to come by.
“You basically sleep when you can, so by the time you get there you’re just about passing out.”
Dunlop will head up to Sydney on Thursday for some preparation, before getting some quiet time on Christmas day.
“We’ll spend the weekend with the crew on the Harbour doing some training and safety stuff,” Dunlop said. “We’ll spend a week doing that, then on Christmas Eve we come back to Canberra for a family Christmas, then back up there on Christmas night.”
