Reviving the Little, Old Boat That Could

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/sports/26iht-srshboat26.html

Version 0 of 1.

SYDNEY — In the year when the Maluka of Kermandie first set sail in Sydney Harbor, the American gangster Al Capone was finally imprisoned after a conviction on charges of tax evasion, the kidnapping of the aviator Charles Lindbergh’s infant son dominated global headlines, and the Graf Zeppelin, one of the most advanced flying machines of its day, began regular service between Germany and Brazil.

Capone and Lindbergh are now long gone, and these days passengers are more likely to make a transcontinental flight on a jet than via dirigible, but the Maluka is still going strong at 80 years old. The timber-hulled ship will be both the oldest and the smallest vessel to compete this year in the annual Sydney-to-Hobart race, Australia’s most celebrated yachting event.

Built in 1932, the 28-foot, or 8.5-meter, boat is a serious long shot in the 68th running of the race, which has come to be dominated by yachts at least twice as big that rely more heavily on technological sophistication than old-fashioned gaff-riggers like the Maluka.

On a recent afternoon, the Maluka’s skipper and owner, Sean Langman, glided the narrow ship out of its lodgments at his family-owned boatyard and into the shadow of Sydney’s soaring Harbor Bridge, which had not yet been built when the Maluka made its maiden voyage.

With his son, Peter, 19, and daughter, Nicki, 24, taking on crewing duties, Langman reflected for a moment on tradition and the kind of high-tech gear favored by his competitors in the race, which is now sponsored by the Swiss watchmaker Rolex.

“I think it should be reserved for boats with ice makers and Jacuzzis, and not race boats,” he said with a laugh. “So my way of having a private protest is to come in last, basically.”

Langman, who owns several commercial boatyards around Australia, is no stranger to the carbon-fiber 70-foot maxi yachts that now dominate the 628-nautical-mile race, which is watched by millions when the start is broadcast annually on Dec. 26. He likes to say that he has more second-place finishes in the race than anyone alive.

It was that competitive spirit that made him briefly abandon the Maluka after he had sailed the boat to a last-place finish during his first Sydney Hobart with it in 2006. In 2011, however, he stepped away from the sophisticated kind of yacht that would have given him a real shot at winning the race, opting instead for a near-certain last-place finish and a cozier crew of just six that included his son and daughter.

“I returned to the big boats for two more goes but then kept sort of finding my roots back in this,” he said as the Maluka sailed out of Berry’s Bay on Sydney’s north shore and began a slow circumnavigation of one of the harbor’s many small islands. “It’s just more rewarding.”

And anyway, said the usually taciturn Nicki from her position at the rear of the boat, this year could be different. “It would be good to come in second-to-last, maybe,” she said with a wry smile. “Personal best.”

It could be argued that the story of the Maluka is a quintessentially Australian one. The boat was handcrafted from local huon pine in 1932 for two wealthy brothers, George and William Clark, who had made their fortune in the rough and tumble of the Australian outback around the turn of the 20th century.

The Clark brothers were avid sailors. They first tried sailing to Hobart in 1935, but foundered on a beach in neighboring Victoria State, battered and with bruises to their egos. But in a show of the kind of single-mindedness — some would say stubbornness — on which Australians traditionally pride themselves, the brothers patched up the boat and succeeded in reaching Hobart the following year, about a decade before the first running of the official Sydney Hobart race in 1945.

It was this spirit that Langman says drove him to revive the Clark brothers’ dreams of racing glory in their now outmoded boat.

“I’d just bought this boat with the idea of restoring it and maybe keeping it in Tasmania as some kind of small cruising boat, and I read the story of the Clark brothers,” Langman said. “And I thought: ‘Well, a couple of old bushmen from outback New South Wales can do this, why can’t we do it?”’

Langman purchased the vessel in 2005 for a mere 20,000 Australian dollars, or $21,000, and spent a further 250,000 dollars on restoring the yacht, which had fallen into disrepair. He estimates that the restoration, which was done as part of Noakes Youth, a program the family runs teaching sailing skills to area youths, took more than 15,000 man-hours.

More importantly, he says, it taught a fading set of skills to a generation more interested in video games and social media than studying the ancient arts of the mariner.

“The investment there is that a lot of young people learned how to do these things properly,” he said.

Langman seems more interested in preserving a way of life than in winning a race or, for that matter, in comfort. He and his children laugh with nostalgia and pride when recounting grim stories of seasickness in the vessel’s cramped cabin brought on by rough seas.

“The world was discovered this way,” Langman said as he looked out into the harbor and then turned the Maluka back toward shore. “Half of the Pacific was discovered on the prevailing winds.”

The Maluka then emerged into a view encompassing several aging sandstone prison islands — reminders of Sydney’s cruel history.

“It was a pretty harsh old penal colony once,” he says with a sigh before the Maluka’s sail catches the wind and the old yacht picks up speed and is away.