Royal crew

SAILING LEGENDS: ROLLY TASKER

A lifetime of success both in trophies and the creation of winning boats made for an extraordinary achievement, as Roland Perry recounts.

In mid-1979, Rolly Tasker put his superyacht Siska IV on a freighter with a hope and a prayer then flew with his family to London for his biggest adventure yet - Cowes Week in England. It would end with the two legs of the Parmelia Race, first from Plymouth to Cape Town, then Cape Town to Fremantle. (The race would commemorate the 150th anniversary of the settlement of Western Australia in 1829 by Britain's Captain Stirling.)
Siska IV arrived in Hamburg, Germany, in mint condition. Tasker and crew took her on a warm-up sail from Hamburg to Cowes. He was most focused on the Queen Victoria Cup, which he saw as the biggest challenge and most prestigious event of his half a century of racing. It was a pinnacle of his career, and he had never been more keen to win, both line honours and on handicap. Uppermost in Tasker's mind was competing against the other heavyweight yachts of the world, including Tenacious skippered by American Ted Turner, and Condor with Englishman Peter Bell at the helm. Yet Tasker's number one target was Kialoa, skippered by America's Jim Kilroy, who had been world Maxi champion over the previous two years.
Beating these three world-renowned boats would put him and Siska IV on top of the world.

Tasker’s wife, Sara, acting as the manager for the tour, rented a house at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in August where she was responsible for 17 people, including her five- year-old daughter Sophie and a nanny. She did all the cooking and washing.
"I got home from shopping one day and there was a message from Buckingham Palace," she said, "Prince Charles wished to sail on Siska IV if it was convenient. How polite! How gorgeous!"
Sara replied that Tasker and the crew would be delighted if he would join them on Wednesday in the Queen Victoria Cup, the first and most important of five events in Cowes Week. She was told that the Royal Barge would find Siska IV after she left her moorings in the morning. Then the Prince would come on board. It was decided he would stay with the yacht after the race until the Britannica came back to its moorings after The Royal Barge appeared. HRH climbed on board Siska IV. He recalled each crew member, shook hands with Tasker and greeted Sara with a kiss on both cheeks saying: "How lovely to see you again!" (Prince Charles had sailed with the Taskers in Perth earlier in the year.)
He handed her a paper bag. "What's this’" Sara enquired. "My lunch."
"You're joking," Sara said, "you're taking lunch on to our boat’"
HRH had his own vegetarian assortment.
He was wearing blue jeans, and a navy blue sweater. Sara had outfitted the crew with white pants and white shirts with red Siska monograms printed on them. She gave him a pair of her own white jeans, and the Prince happily conformed to the crew "uniform". He changed in the aft cabin and came up on deck. He told Tasker:
"That's the trouble with jeans; they're like a cheap hotel."
"How’" Tasker asked.
"There's no ball-room."

Mixed fleet chaos
HRH joined the event in the name of his great, great, great grandmother, with 430 other yachts in the Channel Race off Cowes, including several Admirals Cup entrants. Early in the race, he was in the "action" in more ways than as just a deck-hand. There were plenty of yachts running interference accidentally in the Channel. A fleet of 7.5 metre (25 ft) Red Wing craft cut across four maxis, with Siska IV the first in their path.
"We couldn't manoeuvre quickly enough," Tasker said, "because we were not going to turn to port and cause chaos with the other three big boats."
They were not racing against these interlopers. It was not necessary to give way to the starboard boats.
"The guys on the Red Wings began to shout at us," he said, "but we could do nothing but plough on."
The end of Siska IV's massive boom hit the mast of one of the Red Wing yachts, and flipped it over. The skipper came up from under water, shouting and cursing. He waved his fist at Siska IV, and continued with a tirade of abuse. Prince Charles leaned over the side, looking directly at the furious English yachtsman from about two metres. The man's eyes bulged in shock as he realised he had been abusing the heir to the British throne.
"Oh, f’ this!" he said, and sank under the water as Siska IV sailed on, leaving HRH and other crew members laughing.

Approaching the first marker buoy, Tasker was leading the huge fleet and cutting through the water at speed. Kialoa was running a close second.
"I had to move sideways fast because they had huge spinnakers up. Kilroy was taking the wind," Tasker recalled, "I thought he might slip inside us at the buoy."
Kilroy left his spinnakers up too long. In the rush to bring them down, the long sheet wire ran free from one of them. The spinnaker was 36 metres (120 ft) long. The sheet wire was a further 43 metre (140 ft). The 10mm thick wire whipped around 80 metres ahead of the boat and over Siska IV. It had the force and impact of a guillotine as it whirled low. At that moment, Prince Charles stood up to take a photograph.
Crew member Peter Hay put his hand on the Royal Crown and pushed it down, saying:
"Sit down you stupid bastard!"
HRH had probably not heard such a seditious remark, casting doubt on his parentage, since he was a boarder at Geelong Grammar. Yet he did not take umbrage. He knew that decapitation was not in his interest. After that, the Prince was assigned a minder, who was told: "It's your job in this race to make sure the Royal head stays on the Royal shoulders."
In a titanic battle in the last few kilometres, Siska IV beat off its highly reputed opponents in their first-ever clash to win on handicap and take line honours. HRH celebrated with the rest of the crew. In the excitement, Sara threw her arms around him, and then apologised for breaking protocol. But he was not standing on ceremony and was unconcerned. He was as thrilled as anyone to be in one of the best sporting events of his eventful life. He shook everyone's hand enthusiastically. Drinks were broken out.
HRH asked for a rum and coke, while the rest of the crew had tinnies. Prince Charles held the drink down. He was afraid to take a sip as the paparazzi circled in rubber zodiac boats, hoping to take shots of him with the winning crew.
"As soon as I put this to my lips," he said, "the photographers will start snapping. The headlines tomorrow will be ‘Prince Charles gets drunk with Aussie crew.’
"We'll fix that," Tasker said, and then eight burly crew men - all of them more than 190 cm - surrounded the Prince. HRH was able to finish his drink in peace.
Young Sophie called him "Charles".
Sara, concerned with protocol when it suited, reminded her young daughter that Charles should be called "sir". Not brought up in Australia on such servility, the five year-old remarked: "But Charles doesn't mind, do you Charles’"
"No, I don't mind, Sophie."
She had drawn a sketch of him on the yacht.
"I'll treasure this," he said with a smile. Sara believed he handed it to his batman and that it would have ended in the bin. But the Royal "illusion" was that such art treasures were framed in a Royal study forever, which would be difficult given that every time one of the family visited anywhere they were given such mementos. Yet, like Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy, it was what a child believed happened to their gift that mattered.
At 4pm, the Royal Barge arrived and whisked Sophie's Prince Charming away.
The Taskers and the crew went on celebrating, long and hard. Winning the Queen Victoria Cup was Tasker's finest achievement, especially with Tenacious second, Condor third and a host of Admirals Cup boats coming in behind him. When he was later handed the Cup, which had been first raced for in 1851 and presented by Queen Victoria, Tasker wanted to take it home. But the Commodore at Royal Yacht Squadron Cowes wouldn't allow it. "It stays in Cowes," he said.

Tasker then captained his crew in the tragic 1979 Fastnet Race across the Irish Sea, in which 23 boats were sunk and 18 people died. Siska IV survived and took third place. It was next able to sail in the Parmelia race, Plymouth to Fremantle. It broke all time records for the two legs.
The successes in a 100-day period of racing with the brilliant Siska IV, which Rolly Tasker designed and built, was the highlight of his stellar career.

Note: This is an extract from a recently published book, Sailing to the Moon by Roland Perry.

Rolly Tasker bio

Rolly Tasker is one of Australia's greatest all-round yachtsman, winning more races nationally and internationally than any other sailor. Almost all his big wins, including two World Championships in different classes of yacht, over a career spanning half a century, were on craft he built himself. Tasker is also one of the select members of the Australian Sports International Hall of Fame. Competing in the America's Cup led to a life-time association with the world's premier yachting event. It has culminated in the Tasker-fundedAustralian Sailing Museum in Mandurah, West Australia, which opened in April, 2008.