Peter
Kurts, a great yachtsman, sails his final voyage
One of Australia’s
greatest ocean racing yachtsmen of the past four decades, Peter
Kurts, has sailed his final ocean race. The two-times winner of
the Sydney Hobart Yacht Race and six-times Australian Admiral’s
Cup team representative died in Sydney yesterday after a brief
illness.
This illness prevented the 80-year-old doyen of Australian ocean
yacht racing from skippering his beloved 31-year-old timber yacht
Love & War in the 60th Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, which
would have been his own 31st (at least) race to Hobart.
His son, Simon, and other “good friends” sailed Love
& War to victory in IRC Division E and the 30 Year Veteran
Division of the ocean classic, placing a close seventh overall
among the high-tech modern ocean racers – a performance
that Peter had predicted.
“The Cruising Yacht Club of Australia is saddened at the
passing of a great yachtsman and a distinguished club member,”
Commodore Martin James said today.
“Peter had been a member of the CYCA for 38 years and had
represented the CYCA in many international ocean racing events
as well as achieving great success in local ocean racing. He was
one of only a handful of owners to have won the Rolex Sydney Hobart
Yacht Race twice over the past 60 years.”
Love & War, a classic Sparkman & Stephens 47, won the
Sydney Hobart in 1974 and 1978 and represented Australia at the
Admiral’s Cup in England in 1975, and had been maintained
in immaculate condition by Kurts as the most loved boat he had
ever owned.
“We will give this year’s race a real go…she
rates very low under the IRC handicap category,” Kurts said
at the CYCA as he and his crew prepared for the 2004 ocean classic.
“If we get plenty of windward work and she has a low rating
race, then I think we have a really good chance on corrected time,”
added Kurts who also has represented Australia six times at the
Admiral’s Cup in England, including with Love & War.
His predictions were right, but sadly, Peter did not see Love
& War again after she set sail on Boxing Day, 26 December
2004. She sailed back into Sydney Harbour on the return voyage
from Hobart today as he passed away.
Peter Kurts
began his remarkable ocean racing career with Mister Christian,
a Swanson
36 double-ender, when he won the Brisbane to Gladstone Race in
1967 (he then lived in Queensland running his successful property
development and real estate company) and in 1968 he “gave
the Hobart Race a good shake’ with a third overall.
Kurts commissioned Olin Stephens, the famous US naval architect
to design Love & War in 1973, with noted timber boat-builder
Cec Quilkey constructing her hull from cold moulded Oregon pine.
The deck is teak, the interior varnished timber.
For his later
Admiral’s Cup, Sydney Hobart and other international campaigns,
Kurts also built the well-performed yachts Drake’s Prayer,
Once More Dear Friends and Madeline’s Daughter, later selling
these boats.
However, Love
& War remained Kurts’ favourite yacht and he lovingly
maintained and sailed her regularly over the years. In recent
years she has been raced sparingly, winning the 20 Year Veteran
Yacht Division of the 50th Sydney Hobart in 1974 and last year
placing a close second in the Gosford to Lord Howe Island.
The sprightly Kurts had also regularly cruised single-handed with
Love & War on the 400 or so nautical miles across the northern
Tasman Sea to Lord Howe Island. - Peter Campbell |
CLASSIFIEDS AUSTRALIA
