The mast has been installed back into Ludde Invall’s CQS in preparation for the Rolex Sydney Hobart race, after routine maintenance and some minor modifications.
Ludde thanked his team and staff from Hall spars for their work to ensure the mast is in first class condition going into the race on Boxing Day. “They have worked hard over the past few days, and checked the spar and rigging from top to bottom, we have made some minor modifications to the halyard lock.”
The boat was taken from its berth at Birkenhead Point Marina to White Bay on Saturday afternoon, just upstream of the Harbour Bridge, when a large crane lifted the 37.5 metre long spar into place.
The boat then returned to its berth, and on Sunday friends and family will get a chance to look at the boat before training resumes on Monday.
Ludde emphasised that there is still a lot of work to do as they prepare for the big race, but he becomes more confident each day that the huge rebuild that has taken almost a year has been worthwhile. “All we have to do is learn how to sail the boat to its full potential, and the Rolex Sydney Hobart race will be part of that learning curve.”
In additional news, on Monday they changed from a traditional forestay and headsail to a furling headsail.
“We learnt so much during our days of training last week,” said Ludde, “and with input from the whole team, but particularly Chris Dickson, Rodney Keenan and Chris Main, we decided to change from a hanked on headsail to a furling headsail.”
Ludde says they have been able to stick to a well organised schedule of training followed by maintenance in their preparations for the race, “this is the way we run our programmes, alternating training and tuning with maintenance and improvements”.
Some of the race crew have gone home to New Zealand during the maintenance period, and will fly back to Sydney for further training on Wednesday.
– John Roberson
