“Talking Sailing” From My Archive. Stormvogel’s Sydney-Hobart Line Honours

A model of the sail-trimmer’s art, ‘Stormvogel’ steps it out down-wind in the Tasman Sea, transom just kissing the surface as she uses her maximum waterline length.

by Richard Crockett

Having been turning heads around the world and putting in extraordinary performance, ‘Stormvogel’ held nothing back in December 1965 by winning line honours in the classic and tough Sydney-Hobart race.

“December 30, 1965, at 7.30 a.m. ‘Stormvogel’ slides over the finishing line in Hobart. A gun is fired, claxons roar, a big crowd cheers.

“For us the race is over, a fight of more than 640 miles. The other 53 yachts are still battling. ‘Balandra’ and ‘Freya’ are 60 miles astern: if the wind remains during the day, which is likely, they may finish in 10 hour time. We have to give them about 20 hours, so we have no hope of winning on corrected time. But we have line honours.”

That’s how Kees Bruynzeel summed up their race – yet as always he goes in to great detail about the conditions, the other boats, people and more.

This is another great read about a great boat.

READ IT HERE:  stormvogel 1966 02 – SA Yachting – OCR

‘Stormvogel’ finishes at Hobart in the gentle breezes that stymied her effort to break the record held by the U.S. yawl ‘Ondine’.

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