Hellfish Yachting tour of Queensland: August 2004

This is an overview of the Hellfish yachting trip to Australia, comprising of primarily the two top class yachting regattas at Airlie Beach and Hamilton Island. We would sincerely like to thank the following people for making this trip possible: Wendy Ballard, Mount Gay Rum, Maxxium New Zealand, Danny Doolans, and Sail NZ and www.SailingAnarchy.net. Without you this trip would have been impossible, or at least much more expensive and nowhere near as much fun. We thank you very much!

The trip started in a bit of an unorganised panic, as Josh and I received an offer to deliver Zana a 100ft maxi yacht up the coast of Australia from Southport to Mackay. The boys were given such short notice that Matt unfortunately missed out on this part of the tour due to University commitments.

ZANA: (Konica Minolta)
Josh and I had a flight arranged within the next couple of days from Auckland to Brisbane, in order to meet up with Zana before the start of the Southport to Mackay Race. We met at the airport at 5:50am checked in our yachting gear and boarded the plane. The trip was short and clear sky made it very comfortable. We watched some crappy airline movies and chatted about the trip ahead.

We arrived in Brisbane airport and found a brand new Holden V6 commodore waiting for us at the rental car desk; the rental company thought it was wise to decline our requests of a manual. What wicked luck, we took off in the direction of Southport, South that is after a bit of an intense briefing from the nice lady at the rental company. We were expected on the yacht at 10:30am, which began to look unlikely after a couple of wrong turn offs and then the added challange of a toll bridge with no change! But we made it bang on 10:30 am, with time spare enough to return the rental car. We left the dock at 11am (High tide), the yacht draws so much that we actually scraped along the bottom right on high tide, managed to wriggled off and out toward the harbour entrance.

Konica Minolta had intended to compete in the race to Mackay but we had a distinct lack of crew so we delivered the yacht in what would have been a light wind and very frustrating race. The delivery was very relaxed, great weather, light cool breeze and motor sailing along at 10 knots most of the way. We had a two-watch system, three hours on and three off, two people on per watch and a floating navigator. It was light and short enough that this was an adequate number of sailors.

As Zana (Konica Minolta) ghosted up the coast we were followed by a huge procession of dolphins that would regularly visit us just as your watch was beginning to get boring and leave you in awe after an awesome display of tricks that would keep you smiling for hours after. As we got closer to the start of the Great Barrier Reef we saw a large number of whales and their calf’s breeching. On one occasion we had 4 whales off the STBD bow less than 40 meters away. (An awesome sight that just blew us away.)

Saturday the 7th August we were getting ready to listen to the Big Rugby game All Blacks (NZ) vs Wallabies (AUS). With no reception on the boat stereo we resorted to the ‘old faithful’ battery powered walkman. The walkman, of course had only the maximum two ear pieces available to listen to the game, and four people to share them between. So I was placed in charge of commentating the game to the rest of the crew. The All Blacks lost but it was pretty cool to be out of sight of land and still be up with the play live. We went to bed very grumpy kiwis but safe in the knowledge that we still hold the Bledisloe cup. (Sorry Aussies.)

We arrived in Mackay On Monday 9th August at 6:00 am. The harbour was chock-a-block with container ships waiting in a very big queue to load up. We weaved our way through these lit up sea slugs and docked in Mackay harbour. We spent this day exploring Mackay and that evening experiencing its nightlife. Lets just say we were glad to be heading off to Airlie Beach the very next day, no disrespect to Mackay, it is a nice place, but it is not really the party town that we found Airlie to be.

Josh and I jumped in a taxi and met Matt at the Mackay airport. We exchanged stories of the journey so far and boarded a coach to drive the remaining distance to Airlie beach. The great thing about this drive up the coast is the fact that it is all inland and all Sugar Cane, two solid hours with nothing to see but sugar cane! Wow sugar cane (Please note the sarcasm)

Airlie Beach:
Our accommodation for this leg of the trip was the Hotel ‘Hydroflow’ a 50 foot long Elliott freight train, (reaching machine.) The boat had broken the record for the Auckland to Noumea race earlier in the year. The boat had been delivered to Airlie for the Hogs Breath Regatta and Hamilton Island race week. Upon arrival at Airlie Beach we embarked upon a full scale search of the Abel Point Marina in order to find the boat. We then proceeded to get changed into our town kit and hit the main street to sample some of Australia’s finest beers and to view the spectacular international community of Airlie beach. This place was full of backpackers drinking more beer than you could shake a stick at! And of course we Kiwi lads had no trouble fitting into such a culture.

We were quickly into the nightlife, when we were offered $1000 if we could have the 12meter Americas cup replica yacht ‘Australia’ tied up next to ‘Hydroflow’ the next day. This replica is currently on the main street of Airlie Beach acting as a billboard for one of the large bars, it is reputed that once this replica was discovered floating in a local pool – after a similar night of drunken debauchery! One of the team, whose name will remain a secret for now, did his best to make this happen. But quick work from his teammates and a very fast security network managed to persuade him to go and purchase another Mount gay Rum and coke instead, albeit at another bar further down the road!

Over the next few days we did a lot of sailing down past Daydream Island, around some rock and back to the bar. Some windward leeward courses that turned into reaching legs and a huge amount of carnage at the mark roundings. This was the result of a 90 degree wind shift that played havoc with the poor race committee, who by the way ran a splendid regatta. ‘Hydroflow’ was getting destroyed on handicap so our ever-animated skipper went to the handicapper and sorted him out. The next race we won and our handicap was once again altered.

Sailing on ‘Hydroflow’ was a unique experience, at times we would have a stunner then the excitement would escalate especially around camera boats, when all of a sudden the heavens would crack open and every man and his dog on the yacht would start yelling, often resulting in some of the funniest calls I have ever heard. One such quote was a rendition of Frank Sinatra’s classic “I pay the bills, I clean the boat, so you’ll do it “MY WAY.”” Another when fixing a broken batten holder on the main, pushed for time before the start of the race and the battery drill was of course flat, resulting in “Plug the battery drill into the wall and use it while it’s charging.” And the reply “It’s not a bloody cell phone.”

Any way we pulled together and sailed well enough to finish second in the Performance Handicap Racing Division, not the IRC Division unfortunately, but that is another story altogether. First in our division was, however, another Kiwi yacht ‘General Jackson’. We celebrated our success by consuming more than our fair share of our sponsor’s finest drop of MT Gay rum, which was co-incidentally also one of the main regatta sponsors; ensuring there was always a substantial supply of well priced beverages available to the young impoverished yachtie!

Hamilton Island:
We did our shopping in Cannonvale just out of Airlie, which is highly recommended, as food is so expensive on Hamo. We Jumped on the ferry and travelled to the island on what was yet another stunning day in paradise. At this point of the trip we had seen rain only once that’s almost 18 days without a drop. And we were hearing reports of storms, flooding and the roof being lifted off the Wellington airport back home. It was nice to be exchanging the NZ winter for the comfortable 25 degrees Celsius (sorry to the Americans you can convert this into farenhight if you want to I can’t be bothered.) that the Whitsunday’s are renowned for.

Due to a lack of funds the team had to split up and sail on three different boats James remained on Hydroflow, I sailed on Seahawk, another Kiwi yacht, Matt had to return to NZ for university assessments and Josh managed to weasel a position on Zana for Hamo and the return delivery home. (Josh really “Kicked a goal” with this one Quote Gareth Cook)

The racing in Hamo was spectacular. Every boat found someone to ‘match race’ producing some fantastic action in the fleet racing: Zana (Konica Minolta) Vs Skandia. Hydroflow found a fellow red 50 footer ‘Heaven can Wait’ and the battle of the old and the new Farr 40 and Farr 42 ‘Seahawk VMG’ Vs ‘dead down wind running’. The competition spilt over to the laser racing and the entertaining model yacht racing the ‘Blow Fly 1 meters’ on the lay day.

The racing was so close you would get one bad shift and spend the rest of the day playing catch up. Between this and dodging whales left, right and centre we were exhausted every day. At the start of the trip we were so excited about seeing so many whales but by the end we got so sick of them, our attention turned to turtles instead.

Zana pulled a couple of races out of Skandia, Hydroflow was close to Itchi-Bahn in some of the races with long reaching legs. And Seahawk was battling away to 17th position overall.

The return home:
One last night of drinking and farewelling our newfound friends ended at about 6am with a long flight back to Auckland. Not as long as the return trip for some however, as Josh decided he hadn’t had enough of sailing yet and took Zana home, we left him safe in the knowledge that we would see our girlfriends much earlier than he would and we were only missing out on an ass kicking across the Tasman anyways. Sure enough it took them a further nine days to cross the Tasman, nine days of on the wind pleasure!

The trip will remain in my mind as one of the best tours on record. We did a lot of top class yacht racing, whale watching, rum drinking and of course high spirited partying on a tiny budget! A full month away from uni and work, that can be summed up as a bloody good time. My only complaint would be that there is a definite lack of younger yachties at these outstanding events. So I encourage all the younger keel boat sailors to come and party with us next year.

Article written By Robert Hielkema
With the help of Josh Wilson.