Why Doesn’t the Sydney Hobart Race Allow Multihulls?!?!?

The Sydney Hobart is one of the pre-eminent mixed-fleet yacht races in the world. The race takes place every year starting on December, 26, Boxing Day, and this year more than 100 yachts ranging from 34-100 feet embarked on the challenging 628 nautical mile race from Sydney to Hobart, and across the notorious Bass Straight.
The race attracts the top monohull racers from across the globe, but there is one curious thing that separates the Sydney Hobart from other major mixed-fleet races around the world: The Sydney Hobart doesn’t allow multihulls.
But why exactly is that? Only the race organizers know for sure but I have a pretty good idea.
A while back I did a video on why multihulls are so fast, where I compared Comanche, who won line honours in this years’ Sydney Hobart, with IDEC Sport, the fastest trimaran to circumnavigate the globe.
And while IDEC Sport wasn’t even on the podium in this year’s Route du Rhum, so it isn’t even a fast trimaran by today’s standards, it’s still close to 50% faster than Comanche.
This means multihulls are pretty much assured to get line honours, or first to finish, in any mixed fleet race they are allowed to enter.
To level the playing field in mixed fleet races, there is generally some kind of handicap system which gives the slower boats a chance to win on corrected time, but the real prize for many is line honours, or first to finish, regardless of handicap.
There is just something about being the first boat to cross the line that isn’t quite there when winning on corrected time. So line honours is a big deal for the fastest boat owners, their skippers, and perhaps most importantly their sponsors.
This years’ Sydney Hobart line-honours leaders are Andoo Comanche, LawConnect, Black Jack, and last but not least, Hamilton Island Wild Oats, which has won line honours a staggering nine times.
These are all Australian owned or chartered boats, and sponsored by Australian or regional companies or events that have close affiliations with the owners or charterers.
For example, John Winning Jr, is an Australian appliance mogul, and his sponsor Andoo is a major regional appliance retailer, so winning line honours in the Sydney Hobart is a big deal for both him and his sponsors.
Now if we look at another major mixed fleet race, the Fastnet, which is slightly longer but takes place in the waters off the UK and France, we start to get a sense of why the Sydney Hobart organizers don’t want multihulls: Pretty much all of the major ocean racing multihull campaigns in the world are owned, skippered, and sponsored by the French.
So including multihulls in the Sydney Hobart would all but guarantee that Australian owners, skippers, and sponsors would be ousted from the line honours podium and replaced by the French, and because sponsorship is such a big deal that’s a bitter pill the race organizers don’t want to swallow.
Of course it could also promote Australian investment in major multihull campaigns, but that’s a risk the race organizers aren’t willing to take, at least for now.
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