Sightie's seventy fifth by Patrick Bollen

Afloat Magazine May 2008

http://www.afloat.com.au/afloat-magazine/2008/may-2008/Sighties_seventy-fifth#.Vrp81vl96Uk  

Patrick 'Tenpin' Bollen catches up with distinguished ocean racing navigator Richard 'Sightie' Hammond.

Considered by many of his peers as perhaps one of the best ocean racing navigators of his time along with the late Stan Darling, Bill Fesq and Englishman Peter Bowker, Richard 'Sightie' Hammond recently celebrated his 75th birthday at his home in Clontarf.

  Guests included such noted Australian ocean racing identities and Hobart winners as Syd Fischer and Trygve Halvorsen, Don Mickelborough, Ian Kiernan AO, Hugh Treharne, Frank Tolhurst, Dick Sargeant, Jack Baxter, Ken Beashel, Sir James Hardy, and his boyhood pal and long-standing friend Colin Betts.

  Born in 1933 at Coffs Harbour, Richard was educated at Manly West Primary where he was Dux of the School winning a scholarship to North Sydney Boys High. After some deliberation based on curriculum he opted instead to complete his schooling at North Sydney Technical College. He then went on to night school to complete an Engineering degree at the University of Technology in Ultimo.

  His first job at the age of 21 was with the Sydney Water Board. Shortly after he joined Civil & Civic which later became what is today Lend Lease. Civil & Civic won the contract to build the Sydney Opera House Stage One and Richard was appointed the project's Site Engineer.

  He also worked as Project Manager on the innovative Australia Square Tower constructed by Dutch engineer/developer and C&C boss Dick Dusseldorp, a man Hammond best describes as a 'genius'.

  Sir Frank Packer asked the Civil & Civic Group to retrofit the then Daily Telegraph premises in Castlereagh Street, firstly knocking down the old Lombard Chambers which housed the printing presses and add six new stories to the then Head office of Consolidated Press also in Castlereagh Street. At the same time property was purchased in Park Street to erect a new building to house Consolidated Press's head office. The building is still the headquarters of the Packer empire, PBL.

  Hammond recalls a conversation with Sir Frank about the purchase of the Park Street property.

  "Sir Frank and I were standing on the roof of the property and he asked me how much the property will cost. I tell him it will cost �93,000. '�93,000!' shrieks Sir Frank and I reply 'yes, but Sir Frank that's only chicken feed.'  Packer's retort stops me in my tracks; 'Look sonny, �93,000 is never chicken feed, don't you ever forget that for the rest of your life - I'll buy it.'"

  In 1970 Hammond was appointed to the position of Commercial Design Director, Lend Lease.

  Hammond's sailing career started at the age of seven when his mother Olga bought him a seven foot canvas canoe.

  "I rigged this thing to make it sail. Mum made the sails from sheets and I got whatever wood I could to make a mast. Back then the war was on and you couldn't get metal so I made fins from fibro. It was a shocker to windward so I'd paddle up to Manly Wharf set the sails and sail down past Fairlight then into the shallow waters of North Harbour, pull the sails down and paddle back to Manly once more. I'd do this all afternoon till it got dark."

  Aged thirteen Sightie graduated to his first dinghy.

  "Dad was a Captain on one of the US warships and after the war while his ship was in Sydney he ordered two nine-foot clinker dinghies be put ashore at Lavender Bay and painted grey. When he came home on leave he presented me with my first real boat. I took two mates with me and we rowed the boat back to Fairlight Beach capsizing it as we tried to crack a wave to the beach.

  "I was sailing competitively on a 12-foot skiff with Tup Blackwell, a shipwright from Treharne's Boatshed in North Harbour. I was pretty good with tools but Tup showed me a few things and I made a bowsprit, a mast, built a keel and a tiller then stripped the dreadful looking war grey paint from the hull rejuvenating the clinker boat to a gloss green finish and sailed her in the North Harbour regattas.

  "While sailing these boats I was also sailing other people's boats. One in particular was a boat called U-Vee which was a smaller version of Jack Lyons' boat U-Dear in which he won the Australian Championships. I also bought Max Barnett's Scamp. Max would let me use the boat when he went to the races.

  "I then went into 16ft skiffs and sailed with Peter Browne on Solo 1 and Solo 2 in which we won two club championships."

  This was a good time for Sightie as a bloke named Russell Slade was the club champion for such a long time and no one could knock him off.

  "I approached Russell and asked him if I could sail with him and he asked me why and I said because I want to sail with winners.

  "I missed out because Russell took Col Betts on as sheet hand. I started sailing with Russell when he got into yacht racing with Janzoon I. However, my first ocean racing was on a yacht called Wanderer in 1952. We did the '52, '53 and '54 Hobart races."

  In 1953 Sightie at age 20 was the junior hand on Janzoon in the Montague Island race when the fleet was hit by a big southerly after rounding the island.

  "We did a full-standing gybe and lost the rig and our helmsman Tom Faulkner, the former boss of Tooth and Co, over the side. Doug Brown dived into the raging sea and swam 100 yards to save Tom and bring him back to the boat. After we sorted out the mess we retired to Ulladulla."

  From 1955 to 1966 Hammond sailed with Russell Slade on Janzoon I and then the famous Alan Payne designed, Janzoon II, which was the first fibreglass boat built in Australia.

  In 1967 Sightie had his first taste of international victory when sailing aboard the Ted Kaufman design Mercedes III and, along with Gordon Ingate's Caprice of Huon and Sir Robert Crichton-Brown's Balandra, won ocean racing's then Holy Grail the Admiral's Cup.

  Then in 1968 he joined a young Dennis O'Neill aboard the beautiful Koomooloo with his mates Dick Norman and Col Betts winning the Sydney to Hobart classic that year.

  Hammond's ocean racing career just got better and in 1971 he joined Englishman Arthur Slater aboard Prospect of Whitby and in 1972 navigated the remarkable Lexcen design Gingko for Gary Bogard. That year Gingko finished third in the Hobart race behind American Eagle (Ted Turner) and Caprice of Huon.

  Following this, Sightie joined Alan Bond's Apollo III competing in the 1974 and '75 Hobart races. At the same time Jack Rooklyn contacted Richard asking him to project manage the building of the exciting new maxi Ballyhoo which went on to defeat the then world-beating famous American glamour maxi Kialoa III in the 1976 San Francisco Big Boat Series before returning to Australia to claim line honours in the Hobart race that same year. Then, the late Stan Darling was navigator on Ballyhoo.

  By this time Sightie had already completed 20 Hobart races.

  In 1976 he raced with Matika III and in ensuing years he navigated such famous Aussie ocean racers as B195, Apollo IV, Ragamuffin, Inch by Winch, Apollo V, Bondi Tram and the 1981 Hobart line honours winner Vengeance (formerly Siska) for property developer Bernard Lewis.

  In 1979 Sightie joined Syd Fischer as navigator/tactician on the highly successful fourth Ragamuffin which along with team members Impetuous (Graeme Lambert) and Police Car (Peter Cantwell) won the Admiral's Cup in which 15 sailors lost their lives in the devastating Fastnet race.

  Sightie had now notched up his second Admiral's Cup victory. He was a member of seven Australian Admiral's Cup teams from 1967 to 1983.

  In 1986 Bernard Lewis launched his new and mighty Dave Pedrick design Sovereign. Hammond joined as navigator/tactician on Sovereign that year and again in 1987 when he was instrumental in delivering Lewis the Hobart double of both line and handicap honours. This gave Sightie his second Hobart double.

  From 1990 to 1999 Sightie navigated Condor (Tony Paola), Final Approach for the late and great American Don Johnson, Maxi Ragamuffin, Margaret Rintoul II (Richard Purcell) and his last three Hobarts with his good mate Ian Kiernan aboard the beautiful 36-foot Tasman Seabird Maris. His final Hobart race in 1999 chalked up a remarkable 40 Sydney to Hobart Races.