When skipper Danielle Ovenden positions her boat Let's Go at the start of the Sydney to Hobart race, she will quite literally be putting her house on the line.
Let's Go will contest the Sydney to Hobart race.
For the past five years Ovenden and her husband, Alyn, have lived aboard the 52-footer, which they put out to pasture in 2002 after 15 years on the racing circuit. "We took it out of the water in February 2002 and spent eight years rebuilding it and making [it] more into a cruisy boat," Ovenden said.
Equipped with all the comforts of luxury cruising, including a television, fridge, freezer and washing machine, the couple have circumnavigated Tasmania, cruised around the Whitsundays and ventured as far north as Papua New Guinea. But the allure of racing in the 70th edition of the Boxing Day race proved irresistible, Ovenden said, and in February the duo began reconverting their home into a racing vessel once more.
"It's been a logistical nightmare just trying to get ready for this race while also living on board at the same time," Ovenden said.
Advertisement
While Let's Go might look "like a racing cruiser boat", the skipper is confident the modifications have transformed the boat into a "cruising race boat".
"We're heavier than we used to be, so that's obviously going to slow us down," she said, "but it's still pretty quick."
Based at Lake Macquarie, Ovenden and her husband, who co-own Let's Go, are no strangers to the famous Bluewater classic, having both raced three times. "I've never raced to Hobart on this boat," Ovenden said, adding that Let's Go last tackled the Sydney to Hobart when her husband skippered it in 1994.
The decision to restore the 28-year-old boat to race mode after years of fine-tuning its cruising comforts has been a negotiation process, Ovenden said. "One of the changes my husband would like to have done is chop the mast back. Thankfully we talked him out of that."
This time Alyn will watch from the sidelines as Ovenden ��� one of four female skippers in this year's race ��� leads an all-male crew to the finish line on Hobart's Derwent River. But out on the high seas, gender is irrelevant, Ovenden said, playing down the achievement.
"To be honest, I just don't see it as anything different. I've always done my fair share and pulled my weight and earned respect that way. I've always raced pretty much with a predominantly male crew," she said.
Once the race is over, Ovenden said she and the crew would spend a week soaking up the Tasmanian spoils. "I've promised the guys we'll do some tuna fishing off Tasman Island and enjoy the east coast of Tassie."
Then, she and Alyn will return to Lake Macquarie where they will fine-tune their home once more, with a plan to be cruising through Europe in April.