The world’s most famous annual sailing event – The Sydney To Hobart Yacht Race – has been designated as the 6th & newest flagship Sydney Spectacular.

This means the flagship Sydney Spectaculars are as follows:

• Sydney New Year’s Eve (31 December/1 January)
• Australia Day In Sydney (26 January)
• Vivid Sydney (Late May to Mid-June)
• State Of Origin (Late May to Mid-July)
• Sydney To Hobart Yacht Race (6 December-6 January)
• Airshows Downunder Shellharbour (November bi-annually)

The yacht race, affectionally known as The Great Race South, starts annually at 1pm & traditionally on Boxing Day (26 December) in Sydney Harbour & sees single-hulled yachts of roughly 9 to 30 metres in length, travel 628 nautical miles (1163.06 kilometres) in order to be the 1st yacht & crew to arrive in Hobart, Tasmania. The journey involves navigating out of Sydney Harbour & Heads passing 2 buoys before travelling south down the New South Wales coast before crossing the edge of the notorious Bass Strait to reach Tasmania, where they travel down its eastern coast, around the iconic Tasman Island & up the Derwent River to Hobart. The 1st to reach in line with & to the east of Hobart’s Battery Point wins the race’s line honours. There are other race categories, mostly handicaps, but line honours is the only category that features all competitors.

Historically, out of 78 editions, the yacht that has won the most line honours is Wild Oats XI, who was skippered by Mark Richards with Robbie Naismith, Iain Murray & Rodney Daniel as 3 of the many crewpersons, winning 9 times in the editions of 2005-2008, 2010, 2012-2014 & 2018.

The current race record was set in 2017 by LDV Comanche, skippered by Jim Cooney with Casey Smith as Sailing Master, Stan Honey as Navigator & a crew of 17 other people, in a time of 1 day, 9 hours, 15 minutes & 24 seconds (or 27 December, 10:15:24pm).

The sailor with the most line honours victories is Steve Jarvin at 15 victories while Bruce Farr of Farr Yacht Design is the designer of the most winning line honours yachts.

Entering yachts are confirmed about 2 months prior to the race in late October. Entries for the 2024 race closed on Friday the 25th of October 2024 with 112 yachts confirmed including 23 double-handed entrants & 4 30.48 metre long (100 foot) maxis. These yachts include 105 from Australia, 2 from France & 1 each from the United States of America (USA), New Zealand (NZ), China, the Philippines & Japan. Out of the 105 yachts from Australia, currently there are:

• 61 from New South Wales
• 15 from Queensland
• 12 from Victoria
• 10 from Tasmania
• 4 from South Australia,
• 2 from Western Australia &
• 1 from an unknown state/territory

Winning against the world’s best was a dream come true & we are working hard to do it again.

Christian Beck, ‘LawConnect’ Owner & 2023 Race Skipper

Notable confirmed entries include LawConnect, last year’s line honours winner, Comanche, 4-time line honours winner, Bacardi (‘The Bus’), the yacht with the most races entered, URM Group, Moneypenny, No Limit, Whisper, Willow, Caro (NZ), Katwinchar, Wild Thing 100, Ocean Crusaders J-Bird & debutants, Maritimo 100, Fika, Bacchanal (USA) & Cocody (France). The current International Rating Certificate (IRC) handicap class trophy, the Tattersall Cup, holder, Alive, will also try to win it for a 3rd time:

We’re excited to be back, proudly representing Tasmania in the 79th edition & we are hopeful to back up our previous victory. We are in it to win it. Phillip (Turner, the yacht owner) & the whole team are very excited.

Duncan Hine, ‘Alive’ skipper

Officiating the race are umpires, 3 committees (technical, race & protest) & an international jury.

Spectators can watch the race for free. However, to gain access to the Sydney Harbour exclusion zone & be precisely on the start line, there is only 1 spectator boat allowed – the official spectator vessel. This year, the official spectator vessel is The Jackson, a luxury superyacht. Public access is only to the main deck, which has 270-degree views, with the mid & top decks reserved for private functions. New for 2024 are additional, even more comfortable, tables & seating. Tickets are $390 per person & are on sale usually from June. Apart from the race, The Jackson‘s main deck includes canapés, substantial snacks, premium beverages & a 5-meter light-emitting diode screen of the official television broadcast. Official event merchandise is also available for purchase on board. It departs from King Street Wharf 2.75 hours before the race start, returning 2 hours after the race start. Boarding begins half an hour prior to departure from King Street Wharf. There are many other private cruises available for purchase, but they are all are outside of the exclusion zone.

While the race begins on 26 December & can finish within 2 days, the yachts can finish as late as January 6 – 11 days later! Also, at the start & finish cities are Race Villages. These Villages have entertainment, event merchandise, food, drinks & children’s activities.

The Sydney Race Village, held at the Cruising Yacht Club Of Australia, opens about 20 days prior to the race start, on the 6th of December, formally beginning the whole event. It hosts a Women in Sailing Cocktail Party, The Commodore’s Beer & Prawn Night, an outdoor screen for live coverage of sailing events on Sydney Harbour & outdoor seating. On Boxing Day, for the race start, family activities are held at the Sydney Race Village before the Village closes for that edition later that day.

Between the 13th & 15th December inclusive is the Sydney-Hobart Classic Yacht Regatta. A regatta is a series of boat races. This regatta features previous Sydney-Hobart race entrants that launched their yacht over 33 years ago. It features 2 pointscore races of varying courses in 3 handicap divisions while an extra race to open the Regatta combines all divisions into 1, with no points scored & uses the same course. All races are held in the iconic stretch of waterway that features the start of the Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race with 1 race occurring each day.

The Hobart Race Village, held waterside at Constitution Dock, opens at 12pm on the 27th of December & closes on January 1st, formally ending the whole event unless there are still more yachts to finish, which could be the case. The Hobart Race Village has an information desk, question and answer sessions, daily live music & the informal trophy prizegiving ceremonies for the line honours & IRC handicap winners, the latter handicap category making up about 63% of the racing fleet.

Vendors already confirmed for the Hobart Race Village include Richard Bennett, Brown Brothers Family Winemakers, Devil’s Corner, Dark Lab, Daiquiri Isle PL, KaKi LiMa Indonesian Street Food, Kung Fu Canteen, Culinary Kitchen, Jasmine Kitchen, Orlando Plenty & Monica’s Fairy Floss.

There is also a formal trophy prizegiving ceremony at Hobart’s Hotel Grand Chancellor at 3pm on New Year’s Eve.

The 2024 race will have its media launch in late November. 8 rule changes though were announced in June when entries opened but they were mainly to do with safety/weather, handicap category requirements/allowances & crew composition but nothing that would significantly affect line honours or change the sporting nature of line honours.

The Rationale

Why this event you ask?

Earlier this year, Australia Day In Sydney expanded their Salute To Australia & Navy Helicopter Flag Display into a new daytime event program called Harbourfest. One of the events in Harbourfest was the Tall Ships Race, a sailing race up Sydney Harbour from Bradley’s Head to the Sydney Harbour Bridge involving heritage tall ships.

Therefore, Sydney Spectaculars believes it is the right time to include sailing events into the events we cover & the most famous sailing race in Sydney is the Sydney To Hobart Yacht Race, that starts in Sydney Harbour.

We considered whether or not the sailing in The Games Of The Olympiad, which Sydney hosted in 2000, is more ‘spectacular’. We decided that the Sydney To Hobart Yacht Race is unique from the sailing in the Olympics. In 1896, whilst cancelled, the sailing in The Games Of The Olympiad involved only naval ships. In 1900, events were based on weight. In 1904-1968, events were based on length. In 1920, geometric area was also considered. In 1924 & from 1932 to the present, the races were also based on the overall design of the boats (i.e. all boats must be of the same design. That is, ‘one design’.).

To enter the Sydney To Hobart Yacht Race, yachts mainly are required to be single-hulled & with a length of 9 to 31 metres. Currently in the Games Of The Olympiad, events require boats of a length less than 9 metres. The longest sailing boats in the Games Of The Olympiad are 5 metres long & out of the 10 events, 1 event involves a multi-hulled boat. Even though there is no ‘one design’ rule for all entrants in the Sydney To Hobart Yacht Race (there is a special handicap category though), the race’s boat eligibility requirements are distinct enough from The Games Of The Olympiad’s rules to deem the race just as spectacular as Olympic sailing.

History

In 1944, the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia (CYCA) was formed. A yacht cruise from Sydney to Hobart was proposed by some club members in early 1945 to take place on Boxing Day (26 December) that year. In the middle of 1945, Royal Navy (UK) Officer, Captain John Illingworth, visited the Club & heard about the plans for the cruise. He suggested to turn it into a race – an idea the club took up & on Boxing Day 1945, The Sydney To Hobart Yacht Race first set sail.

It was an immediate hit. The race record dropped dramatically over the 1st generation of competitive sailors from a week to 2.5 days, where it halted for 2 decades, when it was broken twice in 4 editions in the late 1990’s. It took another 6 editions before it was broken again in 2005. Another 12 years passed before it was most recently broken in 2017.

The 1982 edition was the most competitive race so far with the top 2 finishing, for line honours, 7 seconds apart. Last year’s edition comes in at a close 2nd with a gap of 51 seconds.

Tragedy stuck in the 1998 edition when 5 people drowned, 1 dying from a heart attack, 55 people being rescued, 5 boats sinking & 7 boats being left abandoned when an unusually intense low-pressure system formed, resulting in winds of 118 kilometres per hour with gusts of 148 kilometres per hour. It resulted in Australia’s largest peacetime rescue operation with 27 Royal Australian Navy vessels & 35 aircraft searching. Only 38% of the racing fleet completed the race.

For the 1999 edition, rules were tightened but by the 2000 edition, the Coronial Inquest found the CYCA simply “observed” the race rather than “managing” it while also criticising the Bureau Of Meteorology, the Australian Government’s weather forecast agency, for failing to provide an updated forecast, which included the fateful storm, to the CYCA. The CYCA’s Race Director also resigned as a result, particularly after the Coroner felt they would repeat the same mistakes in the future.

In the 2001 edition, a 500-metre wide 190km/h waterspout with golf ball-size hail struck several boats on Boxing Day, severely damaging one, which managed to finish the race. In the 2004 edition, just over half the fleet finished the race due to severe storms, which this time only caused 1 sinking with no lives lost.

The Sydney To Hobart Yacht Race currently has a daily average attendance of 67,000 people and a daily broadcast average audience of 86,000 people though up until 2019, only the start was televised as a special event broadcast. The start sees 400,000 people gather around Sydney Harbour & 700,000 watch on television and via the Internet from around the world. 93,000 people from around the world, on average, watch the line honours finish via television or the Internet. The actual in-person attendance for the line honours finish fluctuates greatly every year as the finish could be in the early morning hours! However, we estimate that if it was in the middle of the daytime with perfect weather for watching & competitive sailing, it would be no more than 13,000 people.

So to acknowledge the fact it is the world’s most famous annual sailing race & it’s sporting iconography for Sydney, we have decided to designate The Sydney To Hobart Yacht Race as a flagship Sydney Spectacular.

What if I cannot attend the event?

From 2024 & in a multi-year deal, the Australian broadcast rights for the start are held by the 9 Network, after a long stint by the 7 Network, but if it is like recent rights with the 7 Network, they are non-exclusive rights. The whole race is livestreamed via YouTube in the form of morning and afternoon updates with live coverage of the start & finish of various yachts & categories including line honours as well as the prizegiving ceremony. It has been confirmed 9Now will show all this, which is a significant change to the previous 7+ coverage, which only featured the start live & on-demand.

The Rolex Sydney Hobart is Australia’s summer sporting icon & we couldn’t be more excited to chart a new era for the race and its competitors through Nine’s huge storytelling ecosystem. It aligns perfectly with our portfolio of world class sporting events & we look forward to partnering with the Cruising Yacht Club Of Australia, their team and sponsors to grow the footprint of this extraordinary event across Australia.

Michael Stephenson, 9 Network Chief Sales Officer & Local Markets Managing Director

Sydney Spectaculars will be providing coverage of the 2024 race. Assuming the television & digital rights are still non-exclusive, this will include all scheduled live streams embedded on our ‘Watch LIVE’ page. We will try to embed unscheduled live streams but owing to the effect of weather on the race and the fact some yachts may finish suddenly in the middle of the night, this may not be possible. However, we will provide a link to where you can find the unscheduled live streams. This will especially be the case if the television & digital rights turn out to be exclusive to the 9 Network in Australia.

The Sydney To Hobart Yacht Race is also part of the Blue Water Pointscore – a series of 6 races from July to December, concluding with the Sydney To Hobart Yacht Race. These additional races are not considered a ‘flagship’ Sydney Spectacular. The series began in 1958 & currently begins in July with the 2nd most ‘spectacular’ race on Sydney Harbour – the Sydney-Gold Coast Yacht Race. The other 4 races currently include the Flinders Islet Race (Sydney-Illawarra-Sydney), the Tollgate Islands Race (Sydney-Batemans Bay-Sydney), the Bird Island Race (Sydney-Central Coast-Sydney) & the Cabbage Tree Island Race (Sydney-Nelson Bay-Sydney). The latter race actually begins on the day the Sydney Race Village opens & is the opening race in the international Australian Maxi Championship.

The Australian Maxi Championship lasts 5 days & features 3 other races down Sydney Harbour and out to off Sydney’s coast & back. A maxi is a yacht that is a minimum of 18 metres long. On the Australian Maxi Championships‘ final day, the Big Boat Challenge is the final race held & just like in the Sydney-Hobart, is open to all yachts down to a minimum of 9 metres in length. This race is held mainly along the waterway that hosts the iconic start of the Sydney To Hobart Yacht Race but instead of finishing in Hobart, they finish at the World Heritage-Listed Sydney Opera House!

If speed, rather than meteorological tactics, is more your style, the Australia Sail Grand Prize (SailGP) of the SailGP Championship is held just to the northwest of Shark Island in early February each year. All sailing vessels in this event are the F50 – a 15-metre-long multi-hull foiling sailing vessel.

There are also other regattas held on Sydney Harbour throughout the year including the one on Australia Day around Shark Island, which is the oldest continuously run annual sailing event in the world & is open to any racing boat. If more than 5 similar boats enter, organisers may form a special division for those boats to race against each other.

The Sail Sydney Regatta is held on Sydney Harbour on the 6-9th December when the Sydney Race Village is open & includes the sailing boat classes that feature in The Games Of The Olympiad excluding windsurfing & kiteboarding, as well as classes of similar to mid-sized sailing craft. Races are held in classes, but some classes may race at the same time on the same course.

There is also, as mentioned earlier, the Tall Ships Race at 1pm on Australia Day from Bradley’s Head to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The Ferrython on Australia Day does not count as that is not a sailing event due to the ferries having motors.

As you can see, Sydney Harbour has a rich history of sailing with its pinnacle the Sydney To Hobart Yacht Race.

Sydney To Hobart Yacht Race, it’s time to set sail!