Great Sydney Hobart classic yachts

Many classic yachts have graced the race over the last 77 years. The Cruising Yacht Club of Australia will regularly profile some of the greats in its quarterly magazine, Offshore.

The first in the series is Kialoa II, the 1971 Line Honours winner now owned by brothers Patrick and Keith Broughton, which is once again entered into the race this year.

Kialoa II was built in 1964 for owner Jim Kilroy by Yacht Dynamics in Harbor City, California.

The yacht has an overall length of 22.4m, a beam of 4.5m and draft of 3.3m. Kialoa II is constructed from aluminium, an unusual material for a yacht of this size at the time. Originally a sloop, Kialoa II was converted to a yawl rig in 1968.

Sparkman & Stephens designed Kialoa II to Jim Kilroy’s design goal of competing and winning in the maxi ocean racing category. This the yacht did fairly successfully, winning most major ocean races at least once during a racing career that spanned nearly a decade.

Kialoa II took line honours in the 1965 Transpac Race, Los Angeles to Honolulu, in a maxi division which included Ticonderoga, Audacious and Stormvogel. The winning margin over Ticonderoga after nine days at sea was 14 minutes.

Other notable line honours included the 1966 Newport Bermuda Race, the 1966 San Diego Acapulco Race and the 1969 Mazatlan Race. Kialoa II also won the 1969 Trans Atlantic Race on corrected time.

In 1971 Kialoa II came to Australia for the Sydney Hobart. As DD McNicholl reported in The Australian, “when… Jim Kilroy first tied up his new yacht Kialoa II at the CYCA marina in Sydney, he emptied the bar. Grizzled sailors were shouldering each other out of the way as they struggled to get a good look at this revolutionary aluminium-hulled racing yacht that was then the largest Sydney Hobart race entrant anyone had seen. At just over 73 feet, Kialoa II made most of the yachts on the marina look like kids’ dinghies.”

Kialoa II raced in the 1971 Sydney Hobart with a US crew and CYCA legend Mick York added in for local knowledge.

The race started in a moderate nor’easter, however on the second day the wind came in hard from the south, later southwest and gave the fleet of 78 entrants a gruelling slog upwind.

Kialoa II was the first yacht to finish, in 3 days 12 hours 46 minutes, and was followed over the line by the New Zealand yacht Buccaneer and Huey Long’s Ondine. The tough conditions placed Kialoa II 9 hours outside of the record, set by an earlier Ondine in 1962.

In 2016, Sydneysider Paddy Broughton and his brother Keith bought Kialoa II with a plan to compete in the classic ocean races, just as the yacht had under Jim Kilroy.

After a refit, including replacing standing and running rigging and adding new sails, the Broughtons competed in the 2017 Rolex Fastnet Race.

They then sailed Kialoa II to Sydney via the Cape of Good Hope for the 2017 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race.

Since then they have regularly taken part in the Rolex Sydney Hobart and in 2019 sailed to Kialoa II’s birthplace in Los Angeles to participate in the 50th TransPac Race to Honolulu.

Kialoa II continues to turn heads on Sydney Harbour and is a regular competitor in the CYCA’s classic yacht events.