#rshyr – A dream came true for Lough Swilly skipper Sean McCarter (31) at 1916 hrs this evening (Sunday December 29th) when he skippered the Irish Clipper 70 Derry-Londonderry-Doire across the elusive finish line at Hobart in Tasmania to win his class in the 628-mile Rolex Sydney Hobart Race writes W M Nixon
Although the Derry boat and Sean's crew (in which Garda Conor O'Byrne of Balrothery, Co Dublin is a Watchleader) had a lead of 17 miles over the next boat at the finish, the final stages up the Derwent Estuary to the line of the Hobart waterfront as the dawn came up were tense in the extreme. Their speed fluctuated between 2 and 8 knots in the flukey night winds, and they'd nightmares of becoming totally becalmed and then watching the opposition close up with the morning breeze.
To get there in 3 days 16 hours and 42 minutes from Sydney, the crew (of all levels of sailing experience including none at all) had to cope with everything ranging from the hectic start down Sydney Harbour, through frustrating light winds off Australia's southeast coast, and then a rising southwest to west gale as they battered their way across the notorious Bass Strait towards the final hundred miles along the Tasmanian coast and the challenging and wayward approaches to Hobart.
As the gale built, DLDD was neck and neck with Henri Lloyd, until then the boat which had been setting most of the pace in the Clipper series. But a rudder bearing problem aboard HL east of Cape Barren Island led to her eventual retiral from this leg, and Derry Londonderry Doire was left on her own to make the pace, with about ten miles in hand on the next group of boats.
It was a game of cat and mouse, and at one stage they'd opened out the gap to 14 miles, but at other times the tricky headlands and islands of Tasmania saw the pace slacken and the boats astern close up.
For a while nearing the Storm Bay approaches to the Derwent, it looked as if DLDD had it made, as they opened out their lead to nearly twenty miles. But the final miles in the dark were very tricky, "a real nail biter" as McCarter reported - from time to time they seemed to be virtually stopped ,while the boats still out at sea were making full speed. But onward they crawled towards the line, and at 05:42:28 am local time, they were there, the win in the bag, the race sailed in three days 16 hours 42 minutes and 28 seconds, an average of 7.1 knots. And to add a bit of cream on the cake, this remarkable performance has placed them 7th in Division 1 IRC, competing against some of the hottest boats in the fleet.
