Mary Ann Harvey stood 42 hours into last year’s Sydney Hobart wondering why on earth she’d signed up for the 628-nautical-mile bash again. The South Australian, co-owner of the Sydney 38 Clockwork, was getting pounded. Wind in the teeth, swell relentless, no end visible on a dark horizon. She’d competed in three Hobarts already and knew what suffering felt like, but this was different. This was the toughest 42 hours she’d spent at sea.
Then hour 43 arrived.
The sun broke through. Wind swung favourable. The swell eased. Dolphins appeared. Harvey’s certainty that she’d never return evaporated as quickly as the storm clouds. “When it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful,” she says, and that’s when it clicked why she does this race at all.
That epiphany explained her decision to enter the 2026 edition, the fourth consecutive Sydney Hobart for Clockwork since Harvey and co-owner Andrew Lloyd bought the yacht in 2022. It’s not the punishment that draws her back. It’s the opposite. It’s the moment when a crew of ordinary club sailors, working together under pressure, rounds a corner into clement weather and realises they belong on the ocean.
“I don’t do the Sydney Hobart for the hard stuff,” Harvey says. “I do it for the fun stuff and the challenge.”
There’s quiet pride in what Harvey and Lloyd have built since buying the yacht with its distinctive orange steering wheel. Two boat owners running a Corinthian program, no sponsorship, no corporate backing, yet logging countless miles around the Australian coast with rotating crew. They’ve raced summer regattas in Queensland, winter series on Sydney Harbour, long-distance events down the coast. Dozens of people have taken their turn on deck with Clockwork. Most importantly, team Clockwork has finished the last three Sydney Hobarts without retirement, a claim Harvey reckons few other boats can make regardless of size.
Last season was rough across the fleet. Thirty-five retirements from 128 starters speaks to heavy weather. Clockwork finished. That mattered more than their loss of the Sydney 38 divisional win they’d claimed the year before.
The 2026 calendar is already packed. The Australian Women’s Keelboat Regatta kicks off in Victoria over the June long weekend. Winter racing follows on Sydney Harbour. Then comes the northern push: the Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race in July, the Southport to Mackay, Queensland race weeks, and a regatta at Townsville. Eight months of movement, camaraderie, and racing before heading south for Hobart again.
Harvey’s learned something most sailors discover too late. The Sydney Hobart isn’t really about finishing. It’s about that moment when everything aligns, when you understand viscerally why you came. Then you want to go back.
