Riding the Storm: Greek Australian sets sail for the Sydney to Hobart Race
Source: NEOS KOSMOS
You’re out at sea as six metre waves crash over the boat. Winds hit you at 35-40 knots, that’s around 65 to 74 km/h, that push the boat to the side. People are getting seasick.
The goal is to make sure the boat doesn’t capsize, so everyone rests and keeps watch in shifts. You might be in your bunk for three hours then spend the same time on watch. Sometimes the weather is that bad that you could go 24 hours without sleep, which was once the case for Terry Kourtis.
“But what do you do? We enjoy it,” says Kourtis, who is soon to embark for the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race (S2H).
Widely considered to be one of the most difficult yacht races in the world, the S2H kicks off on Boxing Day where hundreds of yachts are expected to race approximately 1,170km.
“Every time I do it, I keep saying to myself, ‘no, that’s it. Never doing it again’ and I keep going back every year.”
“The seas are pretty bad, and look, the start in Sydney Harbour is just unbelievable. It’s amazing cause you’ve got like over 100 yachts trying to get out of the heads and then you know the two days in between sailing down the East Coast of Tasmania quite full on.
“When the weather’s not coming in your favoured direction, it’s quite hard.”
Kourtis says the worst conditions he’s experienced were 50 knots (92.6 km/h) facing them head on for about 10 hours. Sometimes he’s gone 24 hours without sleep trying to keep the boat safe.
In 1998, six sailors died, five yachts sank, more than 60 yachts retired and 55 participants had to be rescued by helicopter.
Of the 115 boats which started the race, only 44 finished.
Kourtis began the S2H race in 2016 when he used to have a 37-foot yacht named Dark and Stormy.
He stopped after the difficulties of the COVID pandemic but has since began again on another 44-foot yacht by the name of Bacardi.
He races with yacht co-owner Cosmos Papastaras.
This year Bacardi holds the record for the most S2H race currently at 31 and only twice not finishing.
Kourtis’s dad is from Neos Tenedos in Halkidiki and his mum is from Argios Oristicos (Kastoria). Papastaras’s dad is from Kastoria and mum is also from Argios Oristicos.
Kourtis believes they are the only Greek duo to ever race the S2H and as a decade’s long member at Sandringham Yacht Club, he hasn’t seen any other Greeks, that he knows of.
“One time when we took Dark and Stormy to Sandringham, the second year we won the club championship,” he says.
“Now my name Kourtis is on the honour board and when you look at it going back from the 60s, it’s probably the first Greek name on the board.”
He recalls a funny story from when they won the championship.
“I was actually at the bar and there was a guy that we beat. He was off another yacht and he was saying ‘Oh yeah, what do those freakin wogs know about sailing? Don’t they all just fish?” Kourtis laughs.
Kourtis and co have won the club championship, won a whole lot of other trophies and represented the club in the Association Cup.
Now at Sandringham they host Greek nights and Kourtis is known as Spiros because the others don’t believe Terry is a Greek name.
If you ask for Terry, no one will know who that is, but Spiros? They sure do.
Others may know him as Pirate Elefterios, who was one of Captain Feathersword’s friendly pirate crews on The Wiggles back in the mid-2000s.
The original article: belongs to NEOS KOSMOS .
