Kinsale's Cian McCarthy and Sam Hunt who competed in the Sunfast 3300 Cinnamon Girl in December's Sydney Hobart will be keynote speakers at next weekend's (Saturday, February 10th) ICRA conference at the Royal Irish Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire Harbour.

As Afloat previously reported, it was 'quite a brutal experience' in parts, as Sam recalls here:

CINNAMON GIRL GOES TO HOBART

We really enjoyed the Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race 2023, a brilliant but quite brutal experience for us. We found it considerably more challenging than expected, with some particularly intense moments in the closing stages – 45+ knot gusts, 6 mtr swells breaking over the boat, a large volume of water down below, swamped and broken electrics, and one functioning life jacket between two brow-beaten sailors.

The predominance of upwind (~90%) was not what we had hoped for, and meant our chances of a great result were limited but we knuckled down and enjoyed the challenge. We want to come back in the future and give it another red-hot crack.

PREPARATION: One of the largest challenges for competing in the Sydney Hobart is the pre race admin, particularly the personal safety requirements. We both had to do a High Frequency Long Range Radio Course as the CYCA insist on HF radios being used with all competitors participating in 2 radio scheds every 24 hours. We found this one a little difficult to comprehend, seeing as we had both Yellow Brick Trackers and AIS, but we respected the CYCA requirements and worked hard to meet them, for if you missed a Sched you can be disqualified.

Naturally, we also had to meet the standard Cat 2 requirements (Sea Survival and First Aid etc.) The CYCA run a very impressive admin operation in this regard, I think we had to answer 80+ emails from various admin people in the 2.5 months building up to the race.

The required first aid kit included 40+ items with many items under prescription. Without having a local assisting with collating these items, it would have been very challenging. The CYCA run a great event though and were very helpful, including assigning us a local member contact to help with things.

BOAT: We chartered a Sunfast 3300 from Lee Condell of Performance Yachting at Pittwater, NSW. He was exceptionally helpful from start to finish, and we would strongly recommend him to others considering taking on this challenge. Without his support, I don't think we would have managed to navigate the vast amount of pre-race requirements.

The “back home” Cinnmon Girl, showing her extra-long bowsprit at the start of the Dun Laoghaire-Dingle Race 2023, in which she placed second overall and first in the Two-Handers

SAILS: We predominantly use Doyle sails and shipped ours from Cork to Sydney via air freight. We received great support in the build-up from Nicholas O'Leary at Doyle Ireland, along with his colleagues in Doyle New Zealand. Cian commissioned a new No 3 for the race that could reef to a No 4. It was delivered at short notice, along with a new A2.

The No 3 jib is reefable to a No 4 via a zip and heightened tack and clew position. It was simple to action and worked very well. The A2 we found fast and stable, a better setup we believe than the symmetrics flown by many of the other double handed entries. The A2 helped us sail into first in two handed and 6th overall in the first 12 -18 hours of the race, but unfortunately it hardly got any use after that as beating to windward was the modus operandi thereafter.

WEATHER: The initial race start went well. We were on the Third Start Line, and it was a reaching start very similar to a Kinsale start in a SW, where we rolled out the Code 0 on the gun. Despite receiving some surprising unsolicited verbal abuse from a competitor in the moments before the gun (which shocked us a little and gave them the advantage), we were 4th boat to Mark 1 from a busy line of +25 boats. However, the amount of spectator wash and dirty air from the Maxis and other bigger boats after Mark 1 made it tough going, and we seemed to slide backwards fast in the chop and variable wind as we sought to exit the Heads to Mark 2.

The first 8 hours were predominantly downwind and we went particularly well connecting the dots of breeze lines and sailed through a good portion of the fleet until the thunderstorms (constant lightning and heavy rain) sucked all the wind away around 2am on night 1. By that stage we had lined ourselves up quite well to sit in the south going current circa 30km offshore. It was running at about 3 knots – often more than the wind strength – for an uncomfortable but effective means of making miles south.

The Sydney-Hobart Course may look straightforward, but it gets colder with every mile, and the weather changes more quickly than it does in Ireland

The bearing to Tasman Island waypoint ~ 600 miles south - is 183. Due to unpredictable weather and the fact that many of the weather models were not aligning, we had bow out on the long tack imprinted into our strategy for many portions of the race. This seemed to work well due to the unusual weather systems and predominance of southerly winds in this year’s race. For strategy we used Predict Wind Pro, some Expedition routing, and race specific weather briefings from Roger “Clouds” Badham and Peter Isler. This year's weather was pretty unstable and hard to get your head around. Thre’s a good article here on the challenges in the build up.

UPWIND EMPHASIS

Unfortunately, the majority of the race transpired to be upwind, and without water ballast and carrying the higher rating for our bigger kites, we were up against it. The Bass Strait was okay, a tight reach/fetch, but with some breeze exceeding 40 knots for 4 – 6 hours, we got a more-than-reasonable kicking there.

The weather is just more extreme and faster to change than in our local waters of Ireland and Europe. In all fairness, the Aussies are a hardy bunch and well-practiced at putting up storm sails. Seamanship skills for those conditions are rarely required or practiced in Ireland. In 20 years of offshore racing in Europe and US, neither Cian nor I have seen conditions close to the weather we “enjoyed” off Tasman Island on Day 4 -5 0 knot gusts, large breakers, and 6mtr swells.

HYPOTHERMIA RISK

Thankfully the water breaking over the boat is warm ~18c around Sydney. But the constant wetness takes its toll, and temperatures drop as you head south. Despite drysuits and HPX, we were both suffering cold fatigue by end of Day 3, and with the boat totally sodden below deck, sleeping on day 4 became a bit inadvisable due to likelihood of going hypothermic as a result of body temp dropping while asleep. But at that stage, with less than 24 hours to go, you can manage without the sleep.

ISSUES: At Tasman Island (furthest southerly point of race) , we had one major issue. The main cockpit hatch seal was not keeping water out throughout the race and breaking waves on deck were seeping down below. This ramped up by Tasman Island with the breaking seas, and we had circa 350 litres of water down below deck, which was helping to send the boat more sideways than forward in the bigger gusts.

The electric bilge pump was not working, and much of the water was below floor boards that were screwed down, so you couldn't get a pipe in to pump it out. Unfortunately with no windward water ballast to counteract this, it meant we lost a lot of time to other competitors going to windward, most of whom had positive righting water ballast unlike us.

ELECTRICS PROBLEMS

The water issue became more severe in that it caused a minor fire with the electrics going out altogether, 2 miles north of Tasman island. Simultaneous with this, 2 of our lifejackets auto inflated due to the constant water, we had 1 spare but it left Sam without a lifejacket in 45+ knots and 6 mtr breaking waves.

Cinnamon Girl at sea – the further south they went, the colder and greyer it became

In some ways, it felt like a wild day surfing/kitesurfing in Garretstown Beach more than a boat race for a while - this is fine if you are happy to be out there and feel confident, but not so much if you don't, are sleep deprived and very cold.

The Red Bulls were cracked open, and we chose to bend our mindset to embrace the extreme conditions and the water/electrics issue. Condition description language was changed onboard from 'horrendous' to 'next level', and we just cracked on, making slow but steady progress to windward up to and around Tasman Island.

Luckily it was bright with good visibility. There was considerable relief when we finally got well to windward of Tasman and tacked onto port and put some north into our course to head on a tight reach for Iron Pot and the Derwent River. With no instruments we locked visuals of a few boats ahead, and kept a bearing on them. Unfortunately, with so much water onboard we continued to lose ground to competitors on the downwind final leg, as we were not surfing under our Code 0.

“ANCILLARY CHALLENGES”: During the race we also had ancillary challenges reefing the main with the bolt rope pulling out - this meant we were constantly concerned that in putting the 4th reef in during extreme breezes we would risk losing the main altogether, and so stayed under 3 reefs which was just too much for 6-8 hours in the final beat to Tasman. The mainsail had already sustained considerable damage with a number of puncture holes appearing in the mid leech due to flailing reefing lines as we struggled with the bolt rope during a reefing exercise on the 3rd night.

Kinsale in Hobart – Sam Hunt, Stephanie Lyons and Cian McCarthy in the Tasmanian sunshine. Only a day earlier, Sam and Hunt had been living with hypothermia risks in pemanently wet conditions

CONCLUSIONS; Post the race, we have now made a decision to use sliders on the mainsail going forward, and are in the process of designing an offshore hatch for Cinnamon Girl so “downstairs” stays protected and dry in big seas.

RESULT: All in all we were happy enough with the way we sailed. On reflection we probably only made one self-inflicted mistake with a wrapped kite in a gybe, other than that we don't believe we made any significant errors that cost us time. While we had moded the setup of the boat for downwind, the race had the most upwind in approximately 15 years (~90%), and having spoken to a number of veterans of 20+ races, it was one of the toughest for the smaller boats in their memory.

While 2nd Corinthian IRC overall and 3rd in our class and 4th double handed was respectable, we would love to come back and see if we can improve on that,

Huge thanks to our families for supporting us on the mission, to Cian for his brave ambition and being the real driver of the campaign, and to Eden Capital for their support and flexibility, which enabled Sam to participate.

ICRA Conference 2024

All members are invited to attend the ICRA AGM which immediately follows the conference.

The AGM will include a vote for a new Executive Committee, and any cruiser racer boat owner, or boat owners’ representative, can apply to become a member. Please note that two other cruiser racer boat owners are required to nominate you; get in touch with info@cruiserracing.ie with any queries about the process.