sydney hobart yacht race tragedy 1998

• SYDNEY, NSW
• MELBOURNE, VIC
• HOBART, TAS
• BRISBANE, QLD
• ADELAIDE, SA
• CANBERRA, ACT

Sydney to Hobart tragedy: Heroes, survivors reflect

• A Current Affair
• SYDNEY TO HOBART

Send your stories to [email protected]

Property News: 'Residential dustbowls': The postcodes on an investor blacklist.

Top Stories

Lord mayor's historic sixth term election win after 'weird' and 'nasty' campaign

Cathy Freeman's fiery torch moment captivates the world

Dozens of road closures in Sydney CBD: What you need to know

The Aussie industries getting a boost from AI

Terror in the Tasman: Remembering the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, 20 years on

It began, as they all do, at 1pm on Boxing Day in Sydney Harbour.

Just 48 hours later, six lives had been lost in what became the deadliest incident in Australian sailing history.

Less than half of all starters made it to the finish line. Some 24 boats were completely abandoned or written off and 55 sailors had to be rescued, by both aircraft and Royal Australian Navy ships. In all, it was our nation’s biggest ever peacetime rescue operation.

Twenty years on from the 1998 edition of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, Foxsports.com.au looks back at how the terrible tragedy unfolded.

At the starters’ gun, 115 yachts took off through Sydney Harbour and out into the Tasman Sea, to make the 628-nautical mile journey to the south-east of Tasmania.

Yet there were already troubling signs.

A few hours earlier, at the final briefing conducted by the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, sailors were warned of a low pressure system forming off the coast.

“It’s going to be very hard in Bass Strait, so get ready for a nasty one,” Bob Thomas, navigator and co-owner of AFR Midnight Rambler, told skipper Ed Psaltis in comments reported by Fairfax Media .

Don Buckley, a crew member on B52, spoke to NSW Police a month after the race .

“We had a last-minute update and ... the night before it had been pre-empted that perhaps the low was forming and that would be the only spanner in the works, that we might have some hard stuff,” Buckley said.

“It was hard to know how strong it would be but he (the team’s weather expert) certainly said, ‘you’ll get hammered’.

“Most people expect at some time in the Hobart race you’d have a southerly, and it’s just the cycle of the race. So I guess it didn’t ring any more alarm bells than, OK, it will hit us at some stage.

“We felt comfortable.”

Billionaire tech mogul Larry Ellison, a keen sailor, was skippering the yacht Sayonara, which eventually took line honours. But even he wasn’t expecting to get out as well as they did.

“After what was a beautiful day on Sydney Harbour the wind got more intense and the skies slowly, slowly darkened and I remember after 12 hours we were further ahead than the record holder was in 24 hours,” he told News Corp in 2009 .

“We were going twice as fast as the boat that had set the record on that race and I remember thinking, 'well that’s exciting, but what’s going on?’

“Sayonara was going over 21 knots and I kept saying, she’s not supposed to go that fast. As yet it was just a storm. We really didn’t know what we were getting into at all.”

The leaders began to enter the Bass Strait in the early morning of December 27; even smaller boats were travelling faster than anyone expected.

“It was a very fast ride. Our top speed was 21 knots, surfing a wave on an absolute knife-edge,” Psaltis told Fairfax Media .

“The yacht was going so fast there was a big rooster tail off the stern like a speedboat. We suffered two massive broaches during that period.

“They were really out-of-control capsizes – people in the water, absolute mayhem. Both times the little boat just jumped back up and kept going, showing how strong she was.”

On the 27th, the conditions just continued to worsen.

From 30, to 40, to 50 and then 60 knots in just minutes; the boats were battling horrendous winds, massive waves and the corresponding spray which made things incredibly difficult.

Overnight, some were lucky, like the late Gerry Schipper.

Schipper was a Victorian policeman who became a boat safety advocate after his experience in the 1998 race. His friend Tim Stackpool told ABC’s RN Breakfast in 2015 what happened when he went overboard while sailing on Challenge Again at around 1am.

“In the middle of the night, he was working on deck. He didn’t have any safety gear on; no buoyancy vest, he wasn’t attached to the deck. And he got washed overboard,” Stackpool said.

“He heard the call, ‘man overboard, man overboard’, and he found himself, in the middle of the night, huge seas, and just wondering how this boat was going to come and pick him up.

“He saw it disappearing into the distance, and the waves ... they’re like cliffs. So the boat would disappear and reappear as the waves washed over him.”

With no electronic positioning device - now a necessity for sailors - Schipper was left stranded in stormy seas.

“Then he remembered he had one of waterproof torches in his hand; that’s all he had to signal the crew to come and save him. Because of course they couldn’t see either, it was pitch black.

“He was in the water for half an hour; in the end it was a textbook rescue. They turned the boat around and they almost landed on top of him. They turned around ... so the weather would wash him into the boat.”

Gusts of wind were recorded at terrifying speeds of 90 knots (166km/h) around Wilson’s Promontory with crew members having to battle waves that some estimated reached heights of 30 metres.

“We just felt the boat roar up a wave and I think there were screams from the guy steering - ‘look out’. Then we just went straight over, upside down, and it was mayhem,” Don Buckley later recalled.

“It sounded like a motor accident. Just as loud, it was just horrific.”

After a particularly bad wave, Buckley and the crew tried to recover.

“When it came up it was probably worse than when we went down because we had a lot of water in it, and there was stuff everywhere. I was pinned. I had sailed came down on top of me and I was up to [my] neck in water.

“I was screaming at them to get the sails off me, so I could come out, all I wanted to do was run up the hatch.”

A stove top struck a female crew member in the head and she was trapped underwater. One man got his head stuck in the steering wheel and had to snap himself out of his safety harness; that left him 40 metres away from the boat. Fortunately he was able to swim back to safety.

Others weren’t so lucky. A former British Olympian, Glyn Charles, was swept over board from Sword of Orion and died.

Three men, Mike Bannister, Jim Lawler and John Dean, drowned when their life raft fell apart, following the sinking of their yacht Winston Churchill.

Two perished on Business Post Naiad; the skipper Bruce Guy, who is suspected of suffering a heart attack, and crew member Phil Skeggs who passed from injuries suffered when the boat rolled.

Those who were able to kept sailing towards Hobart; 44 yachts made it. Many others had to try and make their way to Eden, in southern New South Wales.

Barry Griffiths, a member of the Eden volunteer coastal patrol, told the ABC he worked a 32-hour shift to co-ordinate rescues on radios.

“There was a terrible lot of screaming. You could hear the desperation in some of the voices,” he said.

“Sometimes their radios went dead, and there could have been a multitude of reasons; [they] were dismasted, some lost power or had too much moisture getting into the radio.”

“I reckon looking out the window there that the top of the waves was nearly as high as this window. It was mountainous seas.”

Sayonara took line honours at around 8am on December 29 - but the victory celebrations were of course cancelled.

“This is not what racing is supposed to be,” Larry Ellison said after the race.

“Difficult, yes. Dangerous, no. Life-threatening, definitely not. I’d never have signed up for this race if I knew how difficult it would be.”

The billionaire still thinks about 1998.

“I think about it all the time. It was a life-changing experience,” he said a decade later.

“We knew there were boats sinking when we got in, we knew people were in trouble still out there in the midst of it and we were enormously grateful having made it.

“We were the first survivor to get in and finish the race. It was a race for survival, not for victory, trophies or anything like that.”

The 44th and final yacht to arrive, Misty, made it to Hobart on December 31. A day later, on Constitution Dock, a public memorial was held for the six lives lost.

Hugo van Kretschmar, commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia (who organise the race), read out this statement:

“Mike Bannister, John Dean, Jim Lawler, Glyn Charles, Bruce Guy, Phil Skeggs.

“May the everlasting voyage you have now embarked on be blessed with calm seas and gentle breezes.

“May you never have to reef or change a headsail in the night.

“May your bunk be always warm and dry.”

If the same conditions seen in 1998 were facing the starters of 2018’s race, things would go much differently.

With better weather forecasts and more safety equipment required on board, the yachts would likely avoid the worst of the storm altogether and be better placed to deal with what does eventuate. Rob Kothe, who was on Sword of Orion in 1998, explained part of the difference to Sail World in 2008 .

“At the 12:30pm sked on Dec 27th 1998, the weather forecast read out by race control was winds up to 50 knots,” he said.

“On Sword of Orion we were experiencing 78 knots. Under racing rules we could not tell anyone, because we weren’t allowed to give other boats assistance by informing them of the weather ahead.

“We decided this was a life and death situation; it was not a game. We broke the rules to report to the wind strengths to the fleet, which soon reached 92 knots.

“It was too late to warn everyone. Many boats were close behind us, but about 40 boats retired to Eden as a result of our actions.

“Under today’s more sensible rules wind speeds above 40 knots have to be reported; therefore sudden unpredicted storm cells will not catch everyone unawares.

“Across the board, the equipment has improved, including better life jackets, better harnesses, personal EPIRBS. There’s also much better education and training. Better weather data and a change in the mind set of Race officials and race participants have made the biggest change, but all these moves have made racing safer.”

The tragic circumstances of 1998 have therefore helped save lives since then.

Twenty years on, a moment’s silence will be performed on race radio to remember the fallen.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

1998 Tragedy Haunts Sydney-Hobart Race

By Christopher Clarey

• Dec. 24, 2008

Silence is hard to come by in the annual Sydney-to-Hobart race. There is the drone or the shriek of the wind, the crash of the waves against the hulls, the ominous harmonics of equipment under great stress, and the shouts and mutters from the crews as they try, once again, to sail their yachts of various shapes and prices from the majesty of Sydney Harbor to the haven of Hobart across the Tasman Sea.

But when this year’s race begins on Friday, silence will be a requirement. It has been 10 years since six men died in the storm-swept 1998 edition of this Australian institution, and a minute of silence before the start and another after the finish will honor those sailors as well as others who perished in the race in earlier years.

“I think it is an appropriate way to show our respects to those who didn’t make it; I’m not sure if there’s any other better way to do it,” said Ed Psaltis, who was skipper of the small yacht that won overall honors in 1998 despite the horrific conditions that some ashen competitors compared to a hurricane.

A single wreath will also be laid in Hobart by Matt Allen, commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, which organizes the race, and Clive Simpson, his counterpart at the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania. Allen and other club officials have contacted the families of the sailors who died in 1998 and received tentative commitments from some family members to be in attendance in Hobart.

“What happened is part of the history of the race — you can’t deny it,” Psaltis said. “One of the guys who died in 1998, Jim Lawler, was a very close friend of my father’s, so it was a personal thing for me.”

He added: “And he was no average yachtie. He was a very accomplished seaman, so to have him perish really knocked me for six. It just showed that even if you are among the best, you can still get taken out. What it shows you, above all, is that the sea is the boss, and you are its servant and don’t even try to think otherwise.”

Larry Ellison, the American billionaire who took line honors in that 1998 race in his maxi Sayonara, gleaned enough amid the 80-knot winds and 60-foot waves to conclude that he never wanted to race the 628 nautical miles from Sydney to Hobart again.

He has been true to his word. He has since focused his big sailing ambitions and budgets on the America’s Cup and other inshore regattas.

But Australians like Psaltis have a more elemental connection to their island nation’s premier yacht race, which was first contested in 1945, just months after the end of World War II. Psaltis, 47, like many a Sydney-to-Hobart skipper, has a regular job that has nothing to do with sailing: He is a partner in Sydney with the accounting firm of Ernst & Young.

Yet despite the torments of 1998 and of other stormy, hazardous years, he has continued to put himself on the starting line. This will be his 28th Sydney-Hobart race, and the 10-member crew on his modified Farr 40, still named Midnight Rambler, will include three other men who sailed with him in 1998: Chris Rockell, John Whitfeld and Bob Thomas, Psaltis’s co-owner and longtime navigator.

“Look, after 1998 I certainly thought very hard about it postrace, along the lines of: I’ve got a wife and three kids. What am I trying to do, to try and kill myself in a stupid yacht race?” Psaltis said. “But I firmly believe that the human spirit wants challenges and actually craves challenges, and to go through life controlled in a regimented, risk-free environment is, I think, no life at all.”

The Hobart — as its participants often call it — is, however, a more regimented race than it was 10 years ago. Safety requirements have been significantly increased and, as with all offshore races, safety equipment has improved. More of it has been made compulsory, including Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons.

At least 50 percent of each crew must take a course on safety at sea, and 50 percent must have completed a Category 1 ocean race. Sailors under 18 are no longer permitted to take part. The Australian authorities have revised and upgraded their contingency plans for rescue and emergency situations.

“The truth is, 1998 was the biggest maritime rescue operation in the history of Australia,” Allen said. “So I think it’s made people focus.”

He added: “You don’t have, as I’ve seen in some other races around the world, people getting together for one race of the year. Pretty much most of the crews in the Sydney Hobart are people racing pretty much continuously.”

The emphasis on safety has increased costs.

“It probably costs about 60,000 Australian dollars to get the average boat trumped up to do the race,” Psaltis said, or about $41,000. “In 1998, it was 30,000 to 40,000. The cost of sails has gone up. Everything has gone up. But safety is one more issue making it harder.”

The surprise is that the new regulations and the global economic downturn have not affected participation rates. Although there have been some high-profile withdrawals, including a Russian maxi called Trading Network, the fleet of 104 yachts for the race this year is the second-highest number of entrants since 1998.

“I think it’s because people have built boats a while ago or ordered boats a while ago, and that’s probably a reflection of earlier economic times,” Allen said. “People have boats, and they might as well go sailing in them.”

Among those who plan to sail is John Walker, who was already the oldest skipper in the race’s history and is now 86. Rob Fisher and Sally Smith, the children of an avid Sydney-Hobart competitor, will become the first brother and sister to skipper yachts in the race in the same year.

Wild Oats XI, the 98-foot maxi owned by the Australian Bob Oatley, has taken line honors the last three years and is a heavy favorite to become the first yacht to do it four consecutive times. Its crew had to scramble to make final-hour repairs last year, but there have been no such dramas in the run-up to this year’s race.

“These boats are clearly faster than any other boats,” Allen said of the maxis. “It’s more a boat-management issue and seamanship issue for them, and absolutely, to get it there four times in a row unscathed would be a great tribute to the skills of the crew.”

But then, Wild Oats XI has never had to sail through what Ellison and Psaltis endured in 1998.

“We got through it, but only through the skin of our teeth,” Psaltis said. “For 10 hours, we were surviving rather than racing. It was the worst I’ve seen and something I don’t want to see again. It certainly did change our lives.”

Yachting World

• Digital Edition

1998 Sydney Hobart: Extract from The Proving Ground by G Bruce Knecht

• Tom Cunliffe
• April 20, 2020

Helpless crew can do nothing except watch as one of their own, swept overboard during a capsize, drifts away in a storm

Red flare and liferaft deployed – crew of the stricken yacht Stand Aside wait for rescue by helicopter in the 1998 Sydney Hobart Race. All photos: Richard Bennett

G Bruce Knecht, sometime foreign correspondent of The Wall Street Journal , has risen nobly to this challenge in his book The Proving Ground . Originally published in 2001 in the aftermath of the tragedy, the book is now available via Amazon – and it should be required reading for all who go offshore to compete.

Within a framework of the race in general, Knecht has concentrated mainly on the events surrounding four boats. Sword of Orion is ultimately abandoned in the direst distress, Winston Churchill is lost, but Sayonara and Brindabella finish.

From meticulous research and endless interviewing of those involved, Knecht has produced a book that is hard to put down. Not only does he describe the events accurately, he takes the bold step of looking critically into the characters and motivations of the dramatis personae.

The book is skilfully crafted by a master and not written as a linear time line, but this has made it difficult to find an extract of suitable length for publication in Yachting World . I have eventually centred on the loss of Glyn Charles, an Olympic sailor from Britain, one of the crew of Sword . Charles joined the crew late in the day as a ‘rock star’ helmsman.

What went wrong and why, as described below, brings us right on board the yacht and it makes for harrowing reading.

From The Proving Ground by G Bruce Knecht

At about 1600, the owner Kooky’s requirement for giving up the race was surpassed as the wind reached close to 70 knots. By then, the yacht was 90 miles from the safe haven of Eden. In racing terms, Sword of Orion was still doing well, but even so he told his shipmate Kulmar he was prepared to give up. ‘It’s up to the helmsmen. If they want to go back, we’ll go back.’

Kulmar already knew what Brownie and Glyn would say, but he quickly checked with both of them before telling Kooky it was unanimous. ‘Fine, let’s do it,’ Kooky said.

‘But where are we going to go?’ Dags the permanent hand interjected. ‘We can’t head directly to Eden. That would put the waves behind us.’

Article continues below…

The inside story of the nail-bitingly close 2019 Sydney-Hobart race

Had any of the crew of the nine yachts that finished the inaugural Sydney Hobart Yacht Race in 1945 been…

Fastnet Race 1979: Life and death decision – Matthew Sheahan’s story

At 0830 Tuesday 14 August 1979, aged 17, five minutes changed my life. Five minutes that, despite the stress of…

Hunched over a map, Kooky suggested that they head west, roughly in the direction of Melbourne, until it was safe to turn toward Eden. At 1644 Kooky announced Sword ’s retirement over the radio, Brownie got out of his bunk and told Kooky, ‘I’ll take the helm when we turn around.’ Kooky said no. ‘Glyn’s on the wheel; he can do it.’

Glyn already had a plan. ‘I’ll wait for a big wave,’ he said. ‘As soon as we’re over the top, I’ll turn the wheel hard as we go down the other side. There’ll be less wind between the waves, and we should be able to get around pretty fast.’

Being on deck was painful. The wind was ripping through the rigging, producing a constant high-pitched shriek. And having created the waves, the wind had gone into battle with them, shaving off the foam at their peaks and creating a jet stream of moisture that looked like smoke. The droplets slapped Glyn and Dags with skin-stinging speed.

All the waves were huge, but after letting several pass Glyn judged one to be larger than the others. ‘This is the one,’ he shouted. The angle increased dramatically as Sword climbed the 35ft wave. Just before it reached the top, Glyn pulled at the wheel, hand over hand.

As Sword passed over the crest and began to tilt forward, the rudder came out of the water. When it resubmerged a couple of seconds later, the Sword carved a tight arc as it skidded down the wave. By the time it reached the valley, it was on a new course.

‘Great job,’ Dags shouted, but he had already begun to worry about Glyn’s ability to drive the boat. Rather than steering the westerly course they had talked about, he was heading north.

‘How are you feeling?’ Dags asked. Glyn, who had a stomach bug and was prone to seasickness, admitted to feeling terrible and then went on to say how bad he felt about not putting in more time at the wheel. ‘I haven’t done my job. I’ve let the team down.’

‘No, that’s not true. Shit happens. If you’re not feeling well, it’s not your fault.’

AFR Midnight Rambler , skippered by Ed Psaltis, battles through the atrocious conditions

The waves were no larger than before Sword changed course, but now they were far more dangerous. The almost northerly course Glyn was steering would take them directly to Eden, but it meant the waves were coming astern. That meant Sword was doing exactly what Dags had desperately wanted to avoid – surfing, vastly increasing the chances of going out of control and rolling over.

Glyn wasn’t really looking at the waves. Having cinched the cord in his hood so tightly around his face that he looked as if he were wearing blinkers, he seemed to be paying more attention to the instruments.

Dags, not sure what to do, shouted over the wind, ‘Do you want me to steer?’ With his eyes focused on the compass, Glyn replied, ‘No, I can do it. It makes me feel better.’ Almost pleading, Dags said, ‘But you can’t steer this way. We have to go into the waves.’

Glyn was obviously miserable. His jacket was equipped with rubber seals around his neck and wrists, which were supposed to keep water out, but a steady stream was trickling down his back and chest, causing him to tremble with cold. ‘This gear is worthless,’ he said bitterly. ‘I’m completely wet. I wish we could just get out of here.’

‘You have to stop surfing,’ Dags insisted. ‘Why don’t you let someone else steer?’ Glyn said nothing.

Dags wasn’t the only crewman who was worried about Glyn’s steering. Clipping his harness onto the safety line, the experienced Carl Watson made his way to the back of the boat. ‘Glyn, your course is too low — you have to come up so we can keep heading into the waves.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Glyn replied without making eye contact. ‘I had friends who died in the Fastnet Race . I know what to do.’

• 1. From The Proving Ground by G Bruce Knecht
• 2. Below decks
• 3. Drowning
• 4. The right response?
• 5. Dry land

• Nautic Shows
• Amerisca’s Cup
• Classic Yachts
• Motor Yachts
• Sailing Yachts
• Superyachts
• Yacht Clubs
• Yacht Club de Monaco

Louis Vuitton Cup – Day 2 | Semi-Finals – LIVE

Louis vuitton cup – day 1 | semi-finals – live, louis vuitton cup – semi finals | press conference, kz7, the yacht that ignited new zealand’s america’s cup passion, superyachts and the super rich – full episode 2024, k1 britannia’s story – the kings yacht, oceanslab – race to zero emissions, riva 76′ bahamas super, the perfect balance – ferretti group, rafa nadal captains a team in the e1, the formula 1 of the sea, “mayhem at lake george” annual boating event lives up to the name, candela c-8 flying above the waves, brabus shadow 900 | 300nm (550km) offshore in 9.5 hours , emirates team new zealand launched their prototype hydrogen-powered foiling chase boat in auckland today, the sailing sixties bbc documentary, j class yacht revival, 44cup calero marinas 2024 review, recap – j class world championship 2017, sailing 60 knots wind on a swan 57,  basque country international jet ski cup 2024, fuerteventura kitefoil international open cup 2024, patri mclaughlin sets new kitesurfing world record 72ft at jaws, sp80 – the boat designed to break the world sailing record, marina opencall – monaco smart & sustainable marina rendezvous 2024, the sydney to hobart yacht race 1998: remembering a deadly storm, the fastnet yacht race tragedy of 1979, tracy edwards – maiden round the world skipper, baltimore: ‘mass casualty event’ as bridge collapses after being hit by ship.

• Nautic Life

To mark the 20th anniversary of the deadly 1998 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, Four Corners unearthed this archive episode investigating what happened in that fateful event. Six sailors died and five boats were lost when a terrifying storm hit Bass Strait during the 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht race. Look back at this investigation by Debbie Whitmont, that retraces the horrific events that unfolded why it was so unexpected.

RELATED ARTICLES MORE FROM AUTHOR

Rescue and salvage operation in the azores.

RECOMMENDED VIDEOS

Ineos britannia picks alinghi red bull racing, editor picks, popular posts, louis vuitton preliminary regatta – barcelona | day 1 – live, emirates team new zealand’s taihoro suffers lift mishap after day 1..., sailgp christchurch bids farewell: coutts cites ‘minority groups’ as cause for..., popular category.

• Amerisca's Cup 107
• Tripulante 18 32
• Life Style 3
• Motor Yachts 3
• Nautic Magazine
• Advertising

How one man predicted the 1998 Sydney to Hobart disaster

Topic: Sailing

Alan Payne's notes ( ABC News )

Speech notes obtained by 7.30 show how one man predicted the disastrous loss of life which befell the 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht fleet, 17 years before it happened.

This Boxing Day marks the 20th anniversary of that yacht race, in which six yachtsmen lost their lives. It ended with Australia's biggest peacetime search and rescue mission and one of the largest coronial investigations ever held in New South Wales.

'Six people will be lost overboard'

Naval architect Alan Payne. ( Supplied )

On a warm summer's evening in December 1981, some of Sydney's elite yachtsmen gathered for dinner and speeches at the harbourside penthouse of America's Cup challenger, Syd Fischer. The event took place under the auspices of the Ocean Racing Club.

One of the after-dinner speakers was renowned naval architect Alan Payne, who told the yachtsmen he wanted to "put something before you", but "not in public", according to his speech notes.

"Alan was very concerned about yacht construction in the late seventies," yachtsman John "Steamer" Stanley, who was present that evening, told 7.30.

"[Yachtsmen were taking] light construction into the ocean and it was dangerous. Alan got up and started to talk about what can happen in Bass Strait in the worst scenario."

By calculating the number of boats in the Sydney to Hobart race in high 35-knot winds, and the frequency of rogue waves, which can be more than twice the height of other waves, Mr Payne gave the yachtsmen a warning.

One of Alan Payne's handwritten speech notes. ( ABC News )

"You would have to do 1,000 Hobart races to be sure of seeing one [rogue wave]. You needn't [worry], but the administrators must," Mr Payne's speech notes read.

"Three [boats] will completely disappear. There will be numerous capsizes and dismastings and injuries. Six people will be lost overboard."

John Stanley was in the room when Alan Payne gave his speech. ( ABC News )

Mr Payne even spoke of the "grief and hardship those deaths will bring".

"When he finished that speech, no one in that room wanted to go south [to Hobart]," Mr Stanley said.

Seventeen years after Mr Payne's prophetic speech, Mr Stanley was winched by a rescue helicopter out of the Southern Ocean after spending 28 hours adrift on rogue seas, which claimed the lives of six of his fellow yachtsmen.

"He said one day it would happen," Mr Stanley told investigating police at Pambula Hospital, NSW, on December 29, 1998.

"When we were caught in Bass Strait that afternoon, I realised that this is what Alan was talking about."

'Water like darts in your face'

Dismasted yacht Stand Aside tows a liferaft while stranded in the Bass Strait. ( AP: Ian Mainsbridge )

Mike Marshman was aboard Stand Aside in 1998, one of the first yachts to be dismasted by rogue waves and high winds.

"It also blows the water off the sea, off the tops of the waves which, if you look at it, it's like darts hitting your face," Mr Marshman told 7.30.

"Communication is difficult, because the sound of the wind blows your voice away, so you have to yell, scream, almost use sign language to get your message across to the person alongside you."

Mike Marshman was a crew member on Stand Aside. ( ABC News )

The Stand Aside crew's dramatic rescue was captured by an ABC News helicopter.

"The helicopter pilot said at one stage he had 100 feet of clearance and it went to 15 [feet]. So that's an 85-foot wave, if you can imagine it," Mr Marshman said.

"We were lucky, I suppose, the fact that we went over first, so the rescue effort came to us instead of going to Winston Churchill.

"If we had gone second, we may have had a similar circumstance," he said.

Three crewmen from the Winston Churchill — Mike Bannister, Jim Lawler and John Dean — died.

Despite his near-death experience, Mr Marshman maintains that in sailing, there's no reward without risk.

"People who do the Sydney to Hobart, or the Fastnet Race in England or climb Mount Everest, are basically thrill-seekers or they just love sailing, so if you put too many rules into it, you'll take the thrill and the thrill-seeking part of it away," he said.

It was an attitude which was slammed by the investigating NSW coroner in the inquest held two years after the race.

'Sailors had a cavalier attitude'

Former coroner John Abernethy was surprised to find some sailors had little knowledge of the concept of rogue waves. ( ABC News )

For retired investigating NSW coroner, John Abernethy, it was one of "the biggest inquests I have ever done and one of the biggest inquests that have been held in this state".

"Based on the evidence I heard from crew and skippers, it was one of largely experienced sailors and masters, some who had a cavalier attitude — it's a man's sport and it should stay that way," Mr Abernethy told 7.30.

"I found it curious that they had quite a poor knowledge of the theory of weather. For example, in general terms the experienced sailors who came before me in my witness box had quite a poor knowledge of the concept of rogue waves," he said.

'That's not how he wanted to go'

Jim Lawler died in the 1998 Sydney to Hobart. ( Supplied )

Jim Lawler died after being washed away from the life raft he clung to with fellow Winston Churchill crewman John Stanley.

His son, John Lawler, is still upset when people say his father "died doing what he loved".

"That's not how he wanted to go," Mr Lawler told 7.30.

"It would've been terrifying to be cold, wet, dark, unable to breathe."

Mr Lawler said that race revealed the self-interest in the ocean-sailing community.

"We were quite surprised at some of the people that really wanted us to keep quiet about things, not raise any questions about it, not make any fuss, which we couldn't quite understand," he said.

"They were all worried about how this was going to make insurance premiums go up for next year's race.

"To be perfectly frank, it made me stop sailing. I'm not that interested in participating in the clubs that organise these races.

"I'm still sort of unsure why they acted in the way they did to one of their brothers and the family of their brothers. It took away my passion for it."