Getaway Sees Tony Sail Into Race Record
Sun Herald
Sunday December 21, 2008
A veteran sailor takes to the seas for his 45th Sydney to Hobart.
What makes a man race more yachts from Sydney to Hobart than any other? Tony Cable, who has missed competing only three times since his 1961 maiden race voyage, can credit his wife this time around.Cable says he is "bemused" at having served enough time to take the record for entering the most Sydney to Hobart races from the late John Bennetto of Tasmania. But with her husband's 45th race on the horizon, Alida Cable didn't want her man moping about their Bellevue Hill house this Boxing Day. "As women are, she was wise enough to say, 'I don't think you would be much good around here'," laughs the bespectacled bald yachtsman, relaxing on deck at the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia at Rushcutters Bay.In just over a week, he will board Peter Goldsworthy's Volvo 60 yacht, Getaway, to do it all again for the 64th Sydney to Hobart. Cable first set foot on a yacht as a 17-year-old in the late 1950s - on a family friend's vessel, the Tarni - and fell in love with the camaraderie, the thrill of competition and rubbing shoulders with "card-carrying larrikins".In 1965, for instance, he set sail for Hobart with the tough, late George "Raw Meat" Pearce. Raw Meat would advise fledgling crew to never remove their shirts during a race, but instead keep adding layers for the cold.Raw Meat's own sartorial etiquette however meant he could be a bit "on the bugle" odour-wise, Cable admits.Working the rest of the year as a draughtsman's supplies importer, Cable has been a Sydney to Hobart cook, sewer rat, deckhand and helmsman. He has seen yachts progress from lumbering heavy timber jobs like the Tarni to today's sleek giants such as the 30-metre Maxi Wild Oats XI, which is aiming for its fourth straight line honours victory this year. (The smaller American boat Rosebud was the overall winner last year based on handicap.)Good seamanship and luck have stood Cable in good stead - one time, the mast fell down while he was on deck. "Jeez, I was bloody lucky the wire didn't fall across me," he recalls. "It could have taken off a couple of legs."No such luck for the six sailors killed on other yachts in the 1998 race. Cable remembers sharing pre-race drinks at the club here with a few of the men who would die in that race a decade ago, and later seeing a flare being shot by one yacht whose crew were saved. Despite safety improvements in the years since, Cable says you can never fully guarantee your safety. "Weather doesn't change," he says. "It's the luck of the draw. We're either going to have a nice day like this or we're going to walk straight into a storm."Cable says he has been lucky enough never to feel fear. In 1999, the tragedies of the previous year still raw in everyone's minds, weather conditions were again tumultuous. A fellow crewman, sailing in his first Sydney to Hobart, would later confide in Cable he had been pretty scared."He had however quickly learned to overcome his fear," Cable says. "He'd be lying in his bunk wide awake, hearing the crashing and banging of the waves, and another guy - me - would hop on the bunk beneath him and within two minutes be snoring like a baby."Cable has been on 19 yachts in the Sydney to Hobart, shared with some 250 crewmates, and twice been on vessels that have taken line honours: Vengeance in 1981, followed by Sovereign six years later.Indeed, Sovereign enjoyed a rare double in 1987: line honours as well as the all-important overall first. Having waited 26 years to win the Sydney to Hobart, the elation "lasted about two days - and then we got some sleep".So does Getaway stand a chance of victory over Bob Oatley's Wild Oats XI? "No, we're probably too small, despite the fact we're a Volvo 60 - although between us and Oatley there are a couple of bigger boats that are very new and modern."So he's not tipping Wild Oats XI for line honours again this year? "Well there's a god of sailing called Hughie, and a lot of sailors fear Hughie and would do nothing to upset him. One thing I wouldn't do is walk around the Cruising Yacht Club with tickets on myself that I might get line honours a fourth time, because Hughie with all his powers is likely to disagree ..."The press and cameras concentrate on the big boats - little realising that the winner could actually come from the smallest boat in the fleet." The handicap, Cable says, "evens things out a lot".
© 2008 Sun Herald