Interesting after reading the story of the unfortunate accident of the Cat flipping over on its way down south.
Is anyone aware of the 1972 Brisbane Gladstone yacht race ,
which the fleet was hit by Cyclone Emily .
There where 3 multi hulls in the race , the race leader a Kraken 40 Decided to keep racing in Extraordinary conditions it finished in 33hrs and the skipper Brian Willey made a statement that they where only using one fifth of the boats ultimate stability even though they met winds of up to 132mph and incredible seas.
They raced around Breaksea Spit (makes me shudder)
and then headed for Gladstone. SV Rival a 32ft mono was rolled twice .
From what Brian said the secret to there success was reefing the main sail makes sense to really but the thought of being out in Harvey Bay while a cyclone has a direct hit on Gladstone isn't worth thinking about.

I believe in the book "lighthouse keepers" by Stuart Buchanan. He talks about the incident. One of the yachts didn't know where they where. When reporting to the police, they asked "well, is it Sandy Cape or Bustard Head lighthouse you can see?" They replied they didn't know.

Maybe that was another incident. Don't think so though.....

I have a lot of friends that were in that race and I remember a mate telling me (he was navigating mr Christian that they hadn't seen anything since sandy cape sailing only on dr with no blue water only foam to the decks they sailed into the eye off facing island gybed over and there was s2 in front of them they all arrived with no skin on one side of their face
even the boats that tuned around said it was a horror show
the most ive seen in the paddock is 50 with wave breaking full length of coal ships on anchor pretty inspiring I am glad I was to young to have done that race