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.”
But in the mid-1990s Robinson, by then an experienced International 14 racer, followed early British pioneers like Neal McDonald and Craig Nutter and started crewing on the Australian circuit as a sheet hand, racing in the 18 Footer multi-city Grand Prix.
By the late 1990s, the lure of the Sydney Olympics and fighting for the coveted British team slot in the 49er skiff class at those Games drew Robinson and Elliott down to Sydney for months at a time. They didn’t quite make it to the Games, but along the way they became experts on the intricacies and challenges of Sydney Harbour. Robinson had also raced with Witt in Britain in 18 Footers and by the time the 1999 championships came round they were ready to give JJ Giltinan a go
“Dave Ovington had started building boats in the UK, so that gave us an opportunity to sail them at home and Aussies like Witty would come over to sail here, and there was a European circuit that we joined in on, and it kind of built from there,” explained Robinson. “But then, trying to get down there, knowing enough about the Harbour and knowing how to sail them in a fresh nor’easter was still going to be a challenge.”
Witt remembers building the sails for Rockport for the series in a class where there were few restrictions. “I had a ridiculously big mainsail for the time and a ridiculously big spinnaker, so once the pressure got up we were pretty quick,” he said. Elliott also remembers that spinnaker: “Yes, it was ridiculous – you could barely hold onto the damn thing,” he said.
The seven-race series started in light or medium conditions with the Rockport crew struggling in the light. But when the breeze arrived for races four and five Robinson and Co took back-to-back wins. By the final race, they just needed to finish better than 10th to make history and win against 21 other boats, including pre-series favourite and multiple reigning champion Trevor Barnabas of Australia.
A poor start made for an interesting day on the Harbour. “I had 10th in my head all the way round – it was reasonably stressful,” remembers Elliott. “We were 11th for a while and we got to 10th. I was always pretty confident we would get back one or two of the boats around us. We just had to keep our nerve. It wasn’t that windy, so we didn’t have our boatspeed advantage, which happened in 12 knots and above…we got there, up to eighth, with three legs to go.”
Elliott still remembers as if it was yesterday the feeling that they had achieved what they always thought was impossible. “To win a race in the 18 Footers was an amazing achievement and then we realised that we could win it overall,” he said. “We knew we were capable of it, but to actually do it was unbelievable. It’s quite hard to describe the emotions you go through on the last couple of legs when you realise you’ve got it done and the feeling of relief.“
Garmin quatix® 8 – 47 mm, AMOLED: The Ultimate Smartwatch for Yacht Racers
The Garmin quatix® 8 – 47 mm, AMOLED is more than a smartwatch – it’s a race tool for serious sailors. With GPS-assisted start functions, full Garmin marine integration, and a stunning AMOLED display, it’s built to give yacht racers an edge on and off the water.
For both him and his skipper, the victory that day would prove the highlight of their sailing careers which had seen both win European and national championships in International 14s, plus success in 49ers.
For Witt, who returned to the class for several seasons after 2011 but never reached the top of the 18 Footer podium again, it was also a dream come true.
“Just to be able to win the world championships – the JJs – it was a lifetime dream of mine as a kid. I was a little Sydney kid and I used to go down and watch on the ferry every weekend. All I ever wanted to do in my life was be an 18 Footer sailor – luckily enough I got the chance,” he said.
Witt says the 1999 win "catapulted" his career which has seen him go on to win many other titles, skipper a boat in the Volvo Ocean Race and currently skipper the 100ft maxi Scallywag. But his participation alongside Robinson and Elliott was always going to be controversial among his own countrymen, some of whom argued that Rockport would not have won without Witt’s local knowledge.
Both Robinson and Elliott acknowledge his key role but have never lost sleep worrying about their critics in this respect. “There were a few naysayers that Witty was there, but I think broadly they were good about it,” recalls Robinson. “There were a few newspaper articles in Sydney about a legend ended, the humiliation of the Aussies or something which was quite amusing and it was on the mainstream news and all the rest of it.”
Elliott remembers turning up the following year, ready to defend their title, when Robinson says they should have won it again but for breakages, only to discover that all evidence of their victory 12 months earlier was missing at the 18 Footer League clubhouse at Double Bay. “There was no sign of the 1999 world title – they still had all the winners up from 1998,” said Elliott.
Looking back, Robinson says the win was down to sailing smart and dealing with the unique combination of challenges you get on Sydney Harbour. “Like all sailing, it’s not making any mistakes,” he said. “The thing about the Harbour is that not only does it blow with the famous nor’easter, it also blows from the east and south and there’s lots of vagaries because there are lots of headlands. And then you add in all the traffic and when you are racing at weekends it is just full of other boats, whether it’s ferries or cruise liners or other boats racing. So the opportunities to blow it are really quite high.”
Witt remembers – as do his two crew mates – a certain amount of chaos on shore during the regatta largely centred around Witt himself, but also a rare chemistry between them on the water. “The minute the three of us stepped on the boat no one ever raised their voice, we never had an argument and everybody sort of did their job,” he said. “Tim drove the boat, I grew up on Sydney Harbour so I had a reasonable idea where we should go on the track and Zeb did the rest, pretty much.”
The Robinson crew certainly broke the mould and made a bit of history. They also showed the sailing world the JJ Giltinan Trophy was there for the taking. Three years after their triumph the American skipper Howie Hamlin won the first of two consecutive championships and he was followed to the top of the podium in 2004 by the British skipper Rob Greenhalgh.
These days Robinson, 60, runs a property business in Europe, Elliott, 56, has his own refrigeration company and Witt is still sailing. The get-together in London was the first time Witt and Elliott had seen each other in years. They sat together and re-watched the races on YouTube and remembered the day they walked off with a trophy that the Aussies thought was their exclusive preserve.
“When you get to our age, you end up going to quite a lot of reunion-type things,” said Witt. “This was certainly the best one I’ve ever been to, and I haven’t been that excited to go to one like this ever before,” he added.
Powered by RedCircle
