Why it is a story.
The Sydney to Hobart is one of the three badass offshore yacht races in the world. (along with the Fastnet from Portsmouth and the Middle Sea race from Malta)
You aint nobody in Australian yacht racing until you've done a S2H.
Basically anyone can enter. The 100' supermaxis finish in 2 days, the 45-70' boats take 3, the faster 30-40s take 4, ans the slower boats are still out there with one more sleep to go before they finish.
yacht tracker (It's like watching a very slow videogame)
While one of the supermaxis will take line honours and get the Teev coverage, the real race is a handicap race, which theorertically any boat can win (The fact that handicap is the real contest is established by the fract that the prize, the Tattersals Cup, is the ugliest piece of silverwre in the world)
This year Jessica Watson, who two years ago, at the age of 16, became the youngest person to sail solo, unassisted, around the world, entered and recruited a group of 9 young sailors under the age of 21.
Jess was never going to win either trophy as her ride, a Sydney 38 One Design, was too small to take line honours, and too new to get a low enough rating to win on handicap.
The question was, how would she fare against the 7 other Sydney 38 yachts?
Well, the Sydney 38s proved amazingly close, from the start, six looked competative. After day one, four could not be separated, swapping postitions 2 to 5 in the class all the way done the coast. On the final night, Jessica's Ella Baché took second spot and held it around the Tasman Island lighthouse, turning north at Caoe Raoul leading the third placed boat by just 3/10ths of a nautical mile (after 600 of them) and finishing just 40 minutes behind the class leader.
The Kidz done good.
Rolex Sydney Hobart - Ella Baché finishes second in division
Rolex Sydney Hobart : They came; they saw; they conquered; so they dunked Jessica
(It's a sign of the crew's affection for the person who's been driving them)
