It was January 1999 when the crew of Rockport – skipper and helm Tim Robinson, sheet hand Dave Witt and bowman Zeb Elliott – pulled off what until then had seemed the unthinkable. They became the first crew skippered by a sailor from the Northern Hemisphere to win the JJ Giltinan Trophy.
Maybe that doesn’t sound much but it was, and still is, a big deal. The “JJ” as 54-year-old Sydneysider Witt calls it, was the Holy Grail of skiff sailing, the world championship of the famous 18 Footers based on Sydney Harbour where they have been embedded in the history and culture of the place since the nineteenth century and beyond.
These super-fast rocketships, with their long bowsprits and big wings, were such a local speciality that few considered it even worthwhile having a go at trying to wrest a trophy from local Aussie or Kiwi skippers who had been awarded it every year since 1938.
Robinson was unusual in that he had been interested in the 18 Footers since his school days when he remembers having a picture on his bedroom wall of Australian skipper Iain Murray at the helm of his multiple JJ Giltinan Trophy winner Color 7.
But even Robinson thought winning the trophy was out of the question for him or anyone else not from Australia or New Zealand. “It was always there, but it was an impossible concept really,” he recalled. “It was just not real because you had to get down there, learn how to sail them, build a boat and all that stuff and it was just never going to happen.”
