A Doug Peterson Three Quarter Tonner with twenty-five Sydney Hobarts to her name is drawing sailors out of the woodwork again, and her current owner reckons that’s exactly the point of the Classic Yacht Regatta.
Ken Gray bought Impeccable five years ago from the family of John Walker, the man who skippered her in every one of those twenty-five Hobart campaigns. The last came in 2008, when Walker, then 86, became the oldest skipper in the race’s history. Along the way Impeccable twice won her division and came agonisingly close to the Tattersall Cup itself, finishing second overall in 1986, third in 1993, fifth in 2006.
That sort of pedigree doesn’t get mothballed. Gray and shipwright Simon Clark have spent years restoring the yacht, and she’s now a fixture of what Gray calls the “vibrant classics community” ahead of this year’s Sydney Hobart Classic Yacht Regatta, running from 11 to 13 December at the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia.
Gray’s connection to the fleet runs deeper than one restoration project. A member of Sydney Amateur Sailing Club and part of the regatta’s cross-club organising committee, he spent years racing alongside Nigel Stoke aboard Fidelis before Stoke talked him into helping grow the next tier of classic boats coming through.
“The history and community around these yachts is fantastic,” Gray says. “Really, it’s all just part of the story, the tapestry of the Sydney Hobart.”
Entries remain open in two divisions. Classics covers any yacht launched before 1976 that has raced a Sydney Hobart; Modern Classics takes in boats launched between 1975 and 1996 with a Hobart start to their name. Between them the categories pull in decades of ocean racing history, much of it still afloat and still competitive.
What strikes Gray most isn’t the racing itself but what happens around it. People turn up to events like the Grand Veterans Race in May, or the Classic Yacht Regatta in December, and suddenly someone’s telling a story about a Hobart they sailed forty years ago on a boat tied up three berths away.
“The events are sailed in such good spirit, it’s fantastic,” he says. “It is such a thrill to see all of those boats out on the harbour together.”
For a yacht that spent a quarter-century chasing the Tattersall Cup under one owner, finding a second life on Sydney Harbour surrounded by old rivals and older stories isn’t a bad way to keep sailing.
