Into the Storm (6 page)

L
arry Ellison became reacquainted with sailing relatively late in his life.
¹
In 1994, Ellison was working out on a StairMaster alongside a friend, David Thompson, who casually asked Ellison if he sailed. The question got Ellison's attention. He had been an avid sailor, but had given up the sport.

Ellison first learned to sail when he came to California in the mid-60s. He took to sailing right away, and his enthusiasm led him to remark that he attended the University of California and “majored in sailing.” Ellison began with a tiny 14-foot “plastic boat,” later graduating to a 24-foot boat, and finally a 34-foot racing sloop.

Ellison also read stories about sailing. He was fascinated by people like Robin Lee Graham, who sailed his 24-foot boat, the
Dove
, around the world. And Ellison loved sailing enough to borrow $25,000 to purchase the 34-foot
Galilee Hitchhiker
. His sailing adventures ended rather abruptly, however, when his first wife, Adda, came close to going overboard during a California race.

It wasn't just that incident that created problems. Adda was so worried about the money that Ellison was spending on his sailing habit that she sought counseling to deal with her anxiety. Ellison was finally forced to sell the boat, having concluded that “eating came before sailing in Maslow's hierarchy of needs.”

All that changed when Oracle went public in 1986. The lower-order needs of safety and security had reached an entirely different level. Ellison was now rich, and he could afford to buy whatever toys he found appealing. He proudly proclaimed, “I'm now world-class at buying things. I moved from Rolex to Patek Philippe. I still have a Mercedes, a couple of them actually, plus the new BMW Z8, a McLaren F1, and a Bentley. It took me a while to learn how to spend money, but once I got started, I discovered I have a real talent for it.”
²

Ellison had acquired considerable talent for buying things, but purchasing another sailboat never entered his mind until Thompson's question. Then, when the conversation turned to racing—and when his friend raised the possibility of sailing on one of the ultrafast maxi boats—everything changed. With money no longer an object, the world of sailing reentered Larry Ellison's life.

It could have been something else, of course. Ellison had contemplated buying the New York Yankees but gave up the idea because he couldn't play on the team. With sailing, it would be different. He would own the boat and he would hire the crew. And if Larry Ellison wanted to drive, nobody would tell him it was against the rules or that he wasn't qualified.

Ellison was not a person to do things halfway, and he set about using his money to buy the best of everything. He found Bruce Farr, a world-famous yacht designer in Annapolis, Maryland. He signed up Mike Cookson and Steve Wilson in New Zealand, known for their expertise with sails and rig design. Ellison found what he considered to be the best in every aspect of sailing and put his team to work building what he hoped would be the fastest maxi in the world. His new boat,
Sayonara
, was “designed as an all-out race boat whose only purpose was winning.”
³
Ellison hired an experienced sailor, Bill Erkelens, who agreed to live in New Zealand for the six months that it would take to build this extraordinary boat. And when
Sayonara
was finally launched, Erkelens became Ellison's
campaign manager
, accompanying him on races as he got the feel of the 80-foot racing machine.

Ellison immediately set his sights on “winning” the 1995 Sydney to Hobart Race. He was not concerned about being declared the overall winner, holding the Tattersall's Cup, or having
Sayonara's
hull on the wall of the Cruising Yacht Club. These were things that passionate sailors with smaller boats might aspire to, but Ellison wanted to cross the finish line first. The distinction between line honors and overall winner was not an issue. If
Sayonara
made it to Hobart first, Ellison could forever say—without qualification—that he had won the Sydney to Hobart Race.

Sayonara
did take line honors in ‘95, and the taste of victory only whetted Ellison's appetite for more. No matter that the overall winner that year was a boat from Victoria named
Terra Firma
—half the size of
Sayonara
—and that Scott Carlile and Dean Wilson had been awarded the Tattersall's Cup. Larry Ellison had been first across the line, so he had won the Sydney to Hobart Race. And he was ready to do it again in 1998.

In ‘95, Ellison was a novice and far from an accomplished helmsman. Winning line honors a second time would prove that Ellison had achieved his rightful status as a sailing heavy. It would show just how much he had improved as a driver. It would give him the ability to showcase his skills. It was the perfect chance to prove himself.

Then there was one other reward. It would also give Ellison a chance to steal the race record from Hasso Plattner, a fellow software mogul who had sailed his boat,
Morning Glory
, to line honors victory in 1996. Ellison and Plattner had a much less than friendly competition, as evidenced by one regatta in which Plattner was said to have saluted
Sayonara
by dropping his pants and displaying his posterior for all to see. Plattner later denied that the incident ever happened, but it became fodder for an ongoing feud between the two competitors.
⁴

Altogether, it is easy to see why the 1998 race had such appeal to Ellison. It was a unique opportunity to demonstrate his sailing skills, to set a new race record, and—symbolically, at least—to return Plattner's backside insult. It was a win-win-win, with little downside risk.

Of course, there was the reputation of the Hobart as the Everest of offshore ocean racing. But Ellison had little concern about physical danger. Though the Hobart was a demanding race, in Ellison's view, it was “one of those events that everyone thinks is cool because it's dangerous. But it's not really a dangerous race. I mean, it's not life-threatening, it's just a hard, demanding race. You have to be reasonably fit to cope with the pounding in Bass Strait, but it's pretty unlikely you'll get hurt.”
⁵

So the stage was set for Ellison's victory in the ‘98 race, but his formula for winning was incomplete. Though he felt that his skills had improved greatly, Ellison left nothing to chance. He had the best boat in the world as his platform, but he couldn't sail
Sayonara
by himself. He would need more than skill and Bill Erkelens. He would need a world-class team, the best that money could buy. And he found that team in New Zealand.

With his talent for spending money, Ellison hired a crew that included ten members of the New Zealand America's Cup team—the same crew that had sailed
Black Magic
to victory in 1995 and who took the trophy back from the Americans. Ellison was willing to pay top dollar for talent, and he was fully prepared to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to have the sailing equivalent of the New York Yankees at his command.

Ellison now had the best boat and, in his view, the best crew in the world. All he had to do was to get
Sayonara
to Sydney by December 26. As he did in ‘95, Ellison solved that problem with a container ship that transported
the Big Yank Tank
—as Australian sailors derisively nicknamed
Sayonara
—across the Pacific.

Poised for victory, Ellison arrived in Sydney a week before the race, accompanied by his then girlfriend, Melanie Craft. Craft did not share Ellison's confidence that the Sydney to Hobart Race was simply a demanding event that others perceived to be dangerous. There was some talk that a major storm could be brewing, and she tried—as she had done repeatedly before—to discourage Ellison from competing.

Larry Ellison brushed aside her concerns, confident that the Sydney to Hobart Race was only perceived to be dangerous and that there was nothing to worry about. He was going to do the race, and it was going to be cool. Very cool.

I
t was a busy time in the Psaltis household. Sue Psaltis and the other spouses and companions of the crew were engaged in a frenzy of activity. One of the biggest jobs was organizing meals for the race. Everything had to be frozen, and the menu was worked out well in advance so the food would be ready on December 26. When the meals were done, Sue made sure that she had a complete crew list with contact numbers in case messages had to be passed along to people at home.

Ed and Bob were preoccupied with getting the new boat in top condition and taking care of the last-minute details that always precede a big race. As he did every year, Bob also set up Sue's computer so she could track the progress of the
Rambler
on the Cruising Yacht Club's website.

At 9 a.m. on the 23rd of December, Ed and Bob attended a compulsory weather briefing at the club. A Bureau of Meteorology representative talked about various computer models and described some of the things that might happen over the next four days leading up to the race.

The forecast
¹
at the briefing was for a quick ride down the coast, but with a gale, at the least, in the Bass Strait. Bob thought,
If we add a 50 percent fudge factor, which is pretty reliable, we'll likely be in strong gale to storm conditions
. Ed remembers one model predicting a chance of an
East Coast Bomb
—a weather pattern in which a cold front moving north combines with a warm front heading south. If that happened, the result would be a mini cyclone off the southeast coast of Australia. In any case, both Ed and Bob left the briefing thinking they would encounter strong gale to storm conditions. It might be a tough race—but they had done tough Hobarts before.

Christmas Day was an exciting time for the children but not a particularly relaxed time for their parents. It was a mixture of fun and opening presents, combined with poring over charts and finalizing last-minute details of who was going to do what on which watch.

Sue was nervous. Some races, like the Mooloolaba, were okay. They were relatively close to shore, with no big offshore stretch like the Bass Strait. If anything went wrong, the crew could be rescued. But the Lord Howe and the Hobart were different. They were more frightening because the boats were farther away from shore.

Sue felt she could relax a bit after the start, but until they passed the Sydney Heads she would be more stressed than any of the crew in the race. Once they were out of Sydney Harbour, she could, as her mother-in-law used to joke, “‘Ease off the backstay' and let out a big sigh that they've gone.”

The day after Christmas, Boxing Day, was the kickoff. Once the crew bags and food had been delivered to the boat, it was Bob's job as navigator to meet with the Bureau of Meteorology rep and hear detailed weather information firsthand. Traditionally, the department would set up a table at the Cruising Yacht Club with printed reports and projected summary weather analyses. As Bob approached the table, however, it was obvious that something had recently changed. He watched as the “Met officer” picked up an entire stack of paperwork and threw it into the trash can beside him.

The meteorologist was shaking his head back and forth as he spoke matter-of-factly: “All our predictions are now obsolete. Everything has changed. You are heading into some very nasty weather.” What had started out as a strong wind forecast had now increased to a gale and could even become a storm. It wasn't clear exactly what was going to happen, and nothing was mentioned about the size of the waves.

Bob returned to the
Rambler
and gave Ed the news. “Forget all the stuff about an easy race,” he said. “This is going to be a very tough one. We've got some major s—t happening down the track.”

The two talked it over, and finally Ed said, “Okay, it's going to happen and we've been here before, we'll just have to handle it.” The two partners were aligned. The crew usually did very well when things got tough. They had planned for rough weather and prepared their boat for bad conditions. They knew from the initial forecast that it would be a “hard” Hobart, but both felt confident they could make it, even if conditions worsened.

Not surprisingly, Larry Ellison had much more detailed information about the weather. He had purchased the services of a weather expert, a private forecaster named Roger “Clouds” Badham. Clouds, who had been forecasting for sailboat racers since 1977, had a distinguished client list. Now he was focused on helping
Sayonara
, another maxi yacht,
Wild Thing
, and other boats that could afford his services.

A week before the race, Clouds began studying an array of computer models and developing scenarios of what might happen. There was the American model, which predicted the most dangerous outcome. There was the Australian model, which seemed less threatening. And there was the European model, which had been most accurate in the past and was of less concern.

Clouds typically ranked the models A, B, or C, in accordance with his assessment of how likely they were to be right. This year, it was a gamble. But twelve hours prior to the start of the race, Clouds decided to go with the regional Australian model, which predicted that the oncoming low-pressure area would be south of the Bass Strait. There was still some uncertainty, however, and he made that clear to his clients at a last-minute briefing on Saturday morning.

Not everyone had the budget to afford Clouds' services, but word of a worst-case scenario started to spread. John Mooney, skipper of the 38-foot
Avanti
, saw Clouds talking to one of his clients.
²
Mooney maneuvered into a position to eavesdrop on their conversation. He learned that one of the models was predicting more than a southerly buster. It was forecasting a southerly
bomb
, with much higher wind speeds. Clouds hastened to add that this was not the most likely option, and he thought that the fleet would get winds of 40 to 50 knots. But the possibility of a weather bomb had Mooney's attention.

Putting aside any thoughts of the days ahead, the crew of the
AFR Midnight Rambler
began stowing provisions. Water bottles were frozen so no ice would be needed. The meals, which consisted of sandwiches and precooked cold dinners, were packed and marked in chronological order of serving. Had weather forecasting been an exact science, however, they would have saved themselves the trouble of thinking about meals. Food would be a very low priority during the next thirty hours.