#sydney hobart race

[a-solitary-sea-rover-backup]

Interview with Liz Wardley, 2 December 2023

This was really such an incredible experience, I'm mutuals with offshore sailor Liz Wardley on LinkedIn and we'd talked in DMs a few times and met IRL at the Ocean Race Newport stopover in 2018 and accidentally when Maiden was at Mystic Seaport last year. I worked up the courage to ask her if she'd be interested in being interviewed for this blog while I'm home on sabbatical this winter and she said yes! We had some trouble working out the time difference because Liz is currently in the Canary Islands getting ready to leave for the World's Toughest Row, a 3000-mile transatlantic rowing race to Antigua, on 12 December. But she took almost an hour to chat with me about childhood jungle adventures, the lucky moment that got her into the Ocean Race, pesto, rubber duckies, and what she has over Jimmy Spithill.

Timestamps:

0:54: Early Days

5:10: The Sydney-Hobart Race

15:32: The Volvo Ocean Race 2001, Amer Sports Two

20:07: Offshore sailing in France

26:03: VOR 2014, Team SCA

29:40: VOR 2017, Turn the Tide on Plastic

32:25: Liz in lockdown

34:44: The Maiden Project

36:30: The Ocean Race 2023, WindWhisper

41:37: The World's Toughest Row

47:06: (Not) Getting Philosophical

[iamdexter123]

Bring on the boats!

Photo credit: Rolex | Andrea Francolini

[malbecmusings]

Heavy weather near Hobart, Tasmania during the 2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart 2023. Kurt Arrigo

[circlejourney]

Time for my favourite annual offshore race!

[like-the-cut-of-your-jib]

For those of you who can’t get enough of the Rolex Sydney-Hobart Yacht race…this is a cruiser’s perspective on preparations and filming near the final turning mark.

Enjoy!

[catostrofiqu]

Sydney to Hobart is on today (big Yacht race that happens on Boxing day every year. It's sponsored by Rolex)

Has Danny been a Racing Sailor yet?

Danny's family is shown to have a decent amount of money and knows a lot of people with money. So what if Danny decided to get into yacht racing. It's a fast pace sport when in competitive races and even in casual club races it's decently fast paced.

Danny gets into Yacht racing. Wins a few big name races and gets to meet more rich people in response.

At one of them he meets either Jason or Duke.

Event gets attacked by... not sure.

Bad guy get punched

And let me tell you. The arm strength on sailors and add onto the fact that Danny has super powers. Well that Villain is in hospital for a bit.

Maybe some Befriendment of Aquaman.

Maybe a mild space obsession which Danny uses to help navigate the seas.

Danny might dial back his strength whilst racing so he doesn't break the boat.

Maybe uses ice on the boat if something starts to break or crack.

Uses a touch of intangibility when sailing for fun to make the boat go faster with less resistance.

[perenial]

theres a cat competing in the sydney to hobart yacht race this year btw

[tcr55]

Lovely clouds at dawn this morning, starting to fill in now ahead of potential storms.

This is Rushcutters Bay, and it might look crowded with yachts now, but wait for Christmas - as this is where many of the boats moor before the Sydney to Hobart race starting Boxing Day.

[gameraboy2]

Sydney - Hobart Yacht Race, 1971

[spiritofsailing]

[2squeakyshoes]

Previous Sydney/Hobart races

[a-solitary-sea-rover-backup]

The first Sydney to Hobart yacht came in days ago and the fanfare on Hobart's waterfront has died down, but that hasn't dampened the welcome for feline entrant and fan favourite Oli.

Oli the cat completed the bluewater classic with his owner Bob Williams on Sylph VI just before 8:30am.

It was the last yacht across the finish line in a time of seven days, 19 hours, 26 minutes and 15 seconds, after a torturously slow trip up the River Derwent.

Mr Williams was emotional upon his arrival in Hobart.

"I don't know why, I think it's about the cat, actually," he said.

"I think it's quite amazing how people have taken a shine to Oli, it's not something I expected.

"For me, Oli is part of my crew, part of the boat."

[iamdexter123]

Photo credit: Rolex Sydney Hobart | Carlo Borlenghi

[sentierscolores]

Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race

[anonsally]

Days 3-5 of Australia vacation: Hobart

On Day 3, we got up early and discovered (to my utter amazement) that showing up at the airport just over an hour before departure for a domestic flight in Australia left ample time for shopping in the terminal even after we had some difficulty with self-checking our luggage.

I enjoyed having free wifi and snacks on the short flight, too, and I loved the view out the window during the descent. Tasmania is gorgeous from above!

We landed in Hobart mid-morning. The airport was a bit of a zoo, but we eventually set out in a giant rental car (to fit the four of us and all our luggage).

The vacation rental was a fairly spacious apartment with inadequate towels and pillows as well as bathrooms that were in desperate need of being redone.

We left our luggage and then drove into town, where we ate lunch sitting outside at a cafe. Despite the urban surroundings, I spotted a bird on a wire and, after looking at it in my binoculars, ascertained that it was a Green Rosella. Not only was this a new bird for me, but it's endemic to Tasmania--it can't be seen anywhere else! So that was an auspicious start to my Tasmanian birdwatching.

Brother-In-Law gave me a ride partway up the mountain on the edge of town (kunanyi/Mt. Wellington) to the trailhead for Fern Glade Track; then he went back to town to hang out with Wife and Sister-In-Law. I had a really nice little hike. I was on the trail for nearly 3 hours, but only went a little over 2 miles. My stated goal was to find a pink robin, but I despaired of that fairly soon as I wasn't familiar with any of the local birds yet and didn't even really know where to look, just that this was the right sort of habitat. I had studied their song and at one point thought perhaps I heard one, but I couldn't locate it. Still, it was a nice hike, and I spotted wallabies a couple of times. I also did see a few birds: a yellow wattlebird, several Tasmanian scrubwrens, a black currawong (which makes a hilarious and distinctive sound), a (probable) scrubtit, and a (probable) Tasmanian thornbill--all of which are endemic! And I heard forest ravens but didn't spot them. Actually, I heard a lot of birdsong but couldn't find the birds, and was extremely disappointed to discover that Merlin's sound ID function doesn't work in Australia.

I rushed back to the road in time to catch the once-per-hour bus back to town. I did not have the correct change for the fare, but the driver just let me ride anyway. Phew.

I met the others at a restaurant on the water and we had drinks and dinner there.

On Day 4, Wife and I had slept really poorly and were too tired to go through with the original plan, so my in-laws went wine tasting and then visited Port Arthur without us. Wife and I took a little walk along the water and saw some sea anemones. And later, I did manage to do a very productive 2-mile, 2.5-hour bird walk around the beach and park near the flat. I spotted lots of new birds: some masked lapwings with their adorable fledglings, a little wattlebird, musk lorikeets, eastern rosellas, sulphur-crested cockatoos (some of which were playing acrobatically in the wind, including flipping upside down), a long-billed corella, galahs, a black-faced cormorant, kelp gulls (Tasmania only has 3 kinds of gull and they're sufficiently different that I was able to identify all of them), and --less excitingly-- some Eurasian blackbirds.

Eventually we all went for a delicious dinner together at an Asian fusion restaurant, and then went to an ice cream boat (Van Diemens Land Creamery) for dessert. We stood under an awning to eat our ice creams in the rain.

On Day 5, we visited the Salamanca Markets in the morning. It was very crowded (Hobart was busy because it was high tourist season in general (holidays, summer) and because the Sydney-Hobart yacht race was going on or possibly ending), but there were some interesting things for sale and also some fun food. I enjoyed a fried potato helix on a stick, which Brother-In-Law informed me was very standard outdoor festival food!

Then we drove to MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art. This is... a very weird museum. The very eccentric owner David Walsh (a mathematician who used his skills to win a lot of money at casinos?) had it built to show his private art collection. We were there for several hours and didn't see all of it, but there was a lot of interesting stuff and the architecture was also good. It's mostly underground. There was a huge exhibition of works by Tomás Saraceno, an artist whose work I've seen some of before. These included a few about air pollution, of which I liked "We Do Not All Breathe The Same Air" best, and an installation called "A Thermodynamic Imaginary" which was astronomy-inspired. In the permanent collection, my favorite was perhaps "Kryptos" by Brigita Ozolins.

There was also a piece called "4PM" by Dean Stevenson, which was a performance; he's a composer and every day he has to compose something because a quartet is going to perform at 4pm whatever he wrote that day. It might be short, but it has to be something!

We were pretty exhausted after that. We had seen Tasmanian nativehens (another endemic!) in the adjacent vineyards when we arrived, and saw them again when we left. We went back home to have some downtime (and a cocktail) before returning to MONA for an outdoor music festival for New Year's Eve. That was pretty fun. We were lucky that it was unusually warm that day and evening. The music was mixed--my favorite band was actually the punk band (Liquid Nails?) that played around midnight--but the setting was nice. It was not too crowded yet also felt like we were out doing something for New Year's Eve, which I don't often do. We ate, had a few drinks, admired the stars, lounged about, explored a little. There was a playground, and I found that swinging on a swing while tipsy was very fun. But there's no denying that it felt really weird to be out so late!

[cherrynika]

sydney hobart race is ending. the harbour is full of yachts and very sun damaged australian men. s## would be so happy