THE ROLEX SYDNEY HOBART

The Rolex Sydney Hobart is an ocean race of 628 nautical miles that starts on Sydney Harbour at one o’clock on Boxing Day and ends on the River Derwent at Hobart, in Tasmania: every division starts at once and goes out through the Heads into the Tasman Sea, south past the last shelter at Eden and across the Bass Strait, the fastest boats arriving in about two days and the rest through the week, in time for New Year’s Eve at Constitution Dock. It is given by the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia with the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania, and it is widely held to be one of the most difficult yacht races in the world.

There is no prize money. The skippers of the first boat home and of the winner on handicap are each given a Rolex watch.

The Cruise

It was meant to be a cruise. In 1945 Peter Luke and his friends, of a club for cruising rather than racing, planned a leisurely sail down to Hobart, and nine yachts gathered for it. Captain John Illingworth, a Royal Navy officer visiting Sydney, suggested they make it a race. His Rani won it in six days, fourteen hours and twenty-two minutes, sailing into Constitution Dock on New Year’s Day 1946.

It became, with the Fastnet and the Newport to Bermuda, one of the classic offshore races. The Bass Strait is the reason. Its shallow water and the southerly busters make the passage cold, bumpy and very challenging even in summer, and many boats retire at Eden, the last sheltered harbour before Flinders Island.

In 1998 a storm of near-hurricane strength caught the fleet. Five boats sank and six sailors died; of 115 starters, 44 reached Hobart, and the rules for crews were tightened afterward. In 2024 two sailors died in separate incidents, the first deaths since.

The race record belongs to LDV Comanche, in 2017: one day, nine hours, fifteen minutes and twenty-four seconds, after Wild Oats XI, first across the line, took an hour’s penalty. Wild Oats XI has taken line honours nine times. Condor of Bermuda once beat Apollo III by seven seconds, in a match race up the Derwent. The Tattersall Cup, for the overall winner on handicap, is called Australia’s foremost offshore sailing prize. Rolex has given the race its name since 2002.

Six Hundred and Twenty-Eight Miles

The cannons go at ten minutes and at five, and then for the start. From half past eleven to twenty past two the harbour is under rule: six knots and no wash, no sails on any boat not racing, and no anchoring by the exclusion zone. Thousands watch from the headlands and the water.

Two prizes are raced for at once. Line honours go to the first boat to Hobart; the maxis that contest them take from a day and a half to two days and more. The Tattersall Cup goes to the winner on handicap, and waits on the smaller boats behind. Each boat ties up in Constitution Dock, and on New Year’s Eve the crews celebrate there, the Customs House Hotel a favourite.

In 2025, the eightieth race, Master Lock Comanche took line honours at 18:03:36 on Sunday 28 December, in two days, five hours, three minutes and thirty-six seconds; it was the design’s fifth line-honours title, under four owners. The Tattersall Cup was decided on the sixth day. Min River, sailed by Jiang Lin with her co-skipper Alexis Loison, became the first double-handed crew to take it, after a jury penalty of an hour and five minutes on a rival, and Jiang Lin the first woman ever to win the race. She is sixty, and began sailing at forty-seven. “Not in my wildest dreams did I think this would come true for me.”

In 2026 the eighty-first race starts at one o’clock on Saturday 26 December. Among the early entries are Alive, twice the overall winner, and LawConnect, three times first home, and the Melbourne Cup’s caller, Matt Hill, joins the commentary. The Sydney Hobart Classic Yacht Regatta is sailed on the harbour from 11 to 13 December.

What to Know

The start is at one o’clock on Boxing Day, 26 December, and the crews are in Hobart for the New Year. The 2027 date has not been announced; the race starts on Boxing Day by custom.

The race’s own spectator boat, The Jackson, is the only public one allowed inside the exclusion zone: four hours on Boxing Day from King Street Wharf 1, at $419 a person on the main deck. From the land, the headlands and bays are the places: Taylors Bay, Chowder Bay, Obelisk Bay and North Head on the western side, Rose Bay, Nielsen Park, Watsons Bay, Camp Cove and South Head on the eastern, and a big screen at the Race Village.

Yachting attire. Nothing is published, and the day is spent on the water or the headlands.

The start is in Sydney and the finish in Hobart; the crews’ New Year is at Constitution Dock and the Customs House Hotel.

The mistake is to follow the fleet in a small boat. After the gun the spectators chase it out through the Heads, the water is crowded and the wash is heavy, and small vessels are told to keep away.

The Court

The Rolex Sydney Hobart is not the Court’s own. Places on the water for the start are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in Sydney and in Hobart, and the table afterward. The race’s New Year is at Constitution Dock; the Court’s other is at Gustavia.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.