Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Will Oxley first sailed across an ocean at just 15. Will was at boarding school in Melbourne when his dad rang, needing his help to bring a boat from the North Pacific to Papua New Guinea. Father and son crewed the boat alone and Will remembers keeping a bucket near him on night watch to regularly pour cold water over his head to keep awake.
Will had been sailing on dinghies since he was a kid, but on that voyage across the Pacific with his dad, he got fascinated by ocean navigation. So Will began to learn the ancient art of celestial navigation using a sextant and the stars.
Chapter 2: What sparked Will Oxley's interest in sailing and navigation?
He's now raced around the world five times, including the 10 months he spent racing backwards, sailing against the wind. Will was navigator on the Ichiban boat when it won the Sydney to Hobart in 2017 and again in 2019. He also took part in the disastrous 1998 Sydney to Hobart race, when a wild storm led to the death of six sailors and the sinking of five yachts.
Will spent part of that race in an upside-down yacht in the middle of Bass Strait. Hi, Will.
Hi, Sarah.
Will, take me back to that 1998 Sydney to Hobart race. What do you remember about setting out?
Yeah, so I was part of a crew from Townsville and we were on a boat called B52. And I'd done the race before a number of times with most of the guys on this boat. The forecast was for strong, relatively strong northeasterlies. And what that means is that the wind direction comes from the northeast.
And so when you get out the heads, you can put up a spinnaker, the big coloured sails, and rip south. But we were expecting a fairly robust front to come through. And so those of you that live on the east coast are well aware of the subtly change and the temperature drops dramatically. And suddenly the wind is coming from the south.
And we were certainly expecting that we were going to see quite a lot of wind, maybe 40 knots. But we were far from aware of what was to come when we set off.
Well, what happened or what had changed by that next morning, by the 27th? What did you wake up to that morning?
So the forecast changed. continued to deteriorate bit by bit. There was some discrepancies between the different bureaus. The Victorian Weather Bureau was saying something slightly different to the Sydney Weather Bureau. But I remember at 6.30 in the morning, this was before, still really before certainly we had access to the internet and onboard. And we used a sort of complicated technology
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Chapter 3: What happened during the 1998 Sydney to Hobart race?
The seas continued to build to a conservative 10 to 12 metres. And the top two to three metres of those waves were every now and again breaking. And so you would see them pass in front of and behind you. And you would go, well, I'm not sure quite how we deal with that if it hits us. And so... We continued. The radio was on full time and there were distress calls going off all around us.
But at that stage, the only thing... It's interesting. People will often say, well, why didn't more boats go to help others? But at that stage, the only thing we could do safely was steer in the direction we were steering in. The concept of trying to even turn around or get that sail up or down was... was going to be very difficult to achieve.
Were people, sailors, staying on deck as these winds and waves were picking up?
Well, at 12 o'clock, we checked in with the weather forecast, confirmed that it was supposed to slowly abate, and so we made the decision... from 12 that we would shut up the boat and we had 10, 10 crew on board. And so we would close the hatch, everything would be locked down and we would just have two people on deck. And then we would swap those people over regularly and, and
I remember that at about six o'clock, I was lying down below right next to the radio, listening to the calls and logging what was going on. And there were helicopters involved and it was general chaos. I lay back down and it was very hot and humid because we had everything shut up.
And I pulled, I took my life jacket off and I took my jacket off and I just had my, we have these sort of long johns and I pulled them down to my, below my waist and just over the top of my boots. And so now I just had my boxer shorts on and I was lying back listening to the radio. And then I remember hearing this tremendous roar and then this large bang.
crash and bang, and the boat was literally picked up and thrown upside down through 180 degrees.
Do you remember falling? What was the experience like if you'd been lying down? How physically shook up were you?
There's not a huge amount of space, but I then, there were two people in bunks just beside me, and I remember I landed on them. And of course, all these sails that we have down below, are now on top of various people. And I remember the first thing that went through my mind was, oh no, I've literally been caught with my pants down.
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Chapter 4: How did the weather conditions change during the race?
So the idea is that you can attach to that, go to the front of the boat to do something and come back. And so what happened is when the boat flipped to 180 degrees, he got sort of thrown clear, but he was still attached. And so he somehow managed to just slide along
the rope and so because he looked up and he could see that there was a keel and there was a rudder and he didn't want the boat to flip again and obviously be hit by those things so he decided that being at the front of the boat was the safest thing and so he was still attached the boat the boat was upside down and then when it flipped back up because he was attached to it it sort of flipped him back on and the other guy he was steering and so when we'd gone upside down he had his life jacket on
But he had gone through the wheel. It was a big wheel. And so now he was upside down underwater, trapped in the boat. And so he had to unclip himself and swim out. And luckily, you have two choices on your life jacket. You can have an auto-inflating life jacket, which as soon as it gets the pressure of the water, it inflates. Or you can have a manual life jacket.
And when you pull the ripcord, like you see on every aircraft, when they do the demonstration, then the life jacket inflates. Now, we choose to use the manual inflate because we think it's safer. And this is the reason why. If he had had the auto inflate, he would have then been immediately buoyant and been trapped underneath the boat without any air and would have drowned.
Instead, he was able to swim out And then inflate his life jacket. But unfortunately, now he found himself some distance from the boat going, oh, this is not ideal. I'm in the middle of Bass Strait. And so he managed to surf back to the back of the boat and get his arm around one of the ropes that was there. So when the boat came upright.
Oh, my gosh.
He clambered back on deck and he just turned around. As soon as he got on board and he started, the mast had broken when, and we presume that happened when the boat came back upright and he just turned around and started undoing things to get ready to deal with the mast. Not even, and meanwhile, I was down below and when we flipped back upright, all the sails had landed on everyone.
And I turned around, I could just see some legs and Linda Axe, one of our crews, she, she had got her head stuck underneath the stove. And so I dragged her legs out and she, because the stove, it was all underwater as well. And so then dragged her out and she popped up and her blonde hair was covered in blood because she cut it.
So I was, I remember dealing with that while the other guys were dealing with the cutting the mast away. So two very lucky people.
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Chapter 5: What was it like being trapped upside down in the yacht?
generally totally unrelated to sailing.
You passed all of that rigorous testing and you were accepted and you were nominated as skipper. What did you think when you met your crew of amateurs?
Yeah, so that was an interesting experience in itself. So each boat had 18 people on board, so there were 17 amateurs. And essentially at that point, almost like they drew them out of a hat, you were told who your sponsor was and you were given a folder with your crew. Now, they tried to even it out across boats. So my crew raged in age from 19 to late 60s and a mixture of males and females.
You then had from January to September when the race started to mould them into a crew. And you had maybe... 20, 25 days with them over that period of time because, of course, all of these people were madly trying to raise money so they could afford to come and go on this mad-capped adventure.
So how did you do that? What did you do in 25 days to form a crew?
Well, I had a good friend who ran a team development company, actually, and he was working with big business. I got him involved. And so we also did a lot of team development work where we tried to understand what made everyone tick in the team. But But at the same time, we were working hard to try to bring up their levels of sailing experience.
And so we broke the boat into different parts and tried to decide what areas of the boat that different people might be good at. And so they then had, if you like, a job description and we worked up a standard operating procedure for how to go through a particular process, be it putting the sail up or taking it down. And so... we then would continually repeat those things.
And many of them were like, well, we want to get onto the really exciting racing bit. And it's like, well, no, we just need to cover off all of these things because everyone needs to do it exactly the same way. Because if we're bashing up wind in 50 knots in the Southern Ocean and you decide to do it in a different way than the person next to you, then that can cause an accident. And so...
We built up a process and we ended up with an extremely competent crew that achieved great success in the race.
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Chapter 6: How did the crew respond during the crisis at sea?
limited life racing at this high level around the world. I think that things like the Sydney to Hobart, you can continue to do. It's just going to require that I sail on bigger boats. At the moment, I sail on a 52 footer, which is essentially a large dinghy.
That is very physically demanding and you probably will struggle to do that at 70, but there are plenty of boats that you can continue to do. to sail on well into your old age. And one of the beauties of the role of navigator is that with age and experience comes wisdom. And so I've learnt a lot and made a lot of mistakes along the way.
And so hopefully you can continue to use those skills for slightly longer than perhaps someone who's winding the winches and trying to do the much more physical part of the work on board.
Well, long may you continue to do so, Will. Thank you so much for being my guest on Conversations.
Thanks, Sarah. It was a pleasure.
I spoke with Will Oxley in 2021 and Will recently completed his 21st Sydney to Hobart race on the yacht Scallywag. These days, Will spends most of his time sailing in Europe on a 111 foot long boat called Raven, which he describes as a very cool yacht. So if you see that passing by, give it a wave.
Will also recently appeared on an episode of the gripping ABC TV series, I Was Actually There, talking about the 1998 Sydney to Hobart race. And you can watch that on iView now. This episode of Conversations was made on the lands of the Turrbal and Yagera peoples. The producer was Nicola Harrison and the executive producer was Carmel Rooney. I'm Sarah Konoski. Thanks for listening.
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