She readies for a 23rd Sydney to Hobart as the crew honours late owner Peter Rodgers

Philip Bell and Mark O'Dea have very different sailing origin stories, but they work very well on the water — and this year they are coming together again to race She in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.

They and the rest of the crew will honour the boat that has more experience in the 628 nautical mile (1,163km) blue ocean classic than all but a handful of craft in the race's long history.

They will also mark a man that connects them both, a former owner and skipper of She who died a year ago.

She is a modified Olsen 40 boat — indeed it has been more modified than most, thanks to that former owner, the late Peter Rodgers.

Bell is the current skipper and the man who bought the boat from Rodgers more than a decade ago. 

A semi-retired civil engineer who ran his own business for many years, he acknowledges he didn't have the usual start to his sailing career.

"Most people take it up [early], they say it was at five years old or something," Bell says.

"I was 60 years old. I did a Yachtmasters course then.

"I reckoned you need to be rich or have lots of time on your hands [to do this].

"I started looking around for a boat and that's a pretty daunting task. Eventually I found a boat and [She] had actually done 17 Sydney to Hobarts and I said, 'Oh, that must be a fairly robust boat.'"

Bell says he never intended initially to do offshore racing. But then he sailed a couple of times with O'Dea, who had been second-in-command on She under Rodgers.

"As I started doing a little bit of racing just here locally and I realised that the ship, she had become a bit of a men's shed," he said.

"We've got a lot of people over 60 sailing, a lot of men over 60 [and] of the 10 people who are regulars with me, I would say six of them have been with me for 10 years.

"So it became sort of a little bit of a — cult's not the right word — but certainly a fellowship."

Bell's first Sydney to Hobart was in 2016. He built up his experience starting with local races on the Gold Coast, then more than a handful of races in North Queensland and the Whitsundays and northern NSW leading into 2016.

So what is life like sailing beyond the margins?

"Because we live such a comfortable life on land every now and then to be out on the edge actually gives you an incentive to, and it makes you, appreciate your comfortable bed at home and the nice things that we've got around us," Bell says.

"It's a reminder that being on the edge and not being necessarily totally in control of everything [that] nature's probably in control."

The skipper says there are a lot of fanatical people who love the race who take part over and over again, pointing to the instructor for his sea safety certificate who had taken part in 47 Sydney to Hobarts.

"He's a great instructor because we've all faced serious issues at sea," Bell says.

"If you stay at sea long enough you'll experience the whole raft of experiences from beautiful sailing to being becalmed to being in a storm.

"And a lot of people say that racing is like 80 per cent boredom, 10 per cent joy and 10 per cent terror."

In 2023 She failed to make the finish due to the mainsail blowing out.

"We sailed for another half a day. And then when we looked at the forecast and we said 'this is not so smart'," Bell says.

"Safety being the key, you've got eight people to worry about, we decided to turn around."

Bell is quite clear about his number one concern during the race.

"Because we can't stop overnight at a motel we've got to continue the race until we get to the end. So therefore one of the biggest factors, especially in the 40-footers, is fatigue," he says.

After the first few hours charging south down the coast with spinnaker up, the crew shift into "four up, four down" mode, with half on shift at any one time to allow them to have "something left in the tank on day three".

"I've got a stations list of what everyone has to do because not everyone's got exactly the same skills. So I have to know what each person is capable of and make the most of that," he says.

If there's one thing Bell sees as a barrier for sailors to completing the Hobart, it's a fairly obvious one.

"I don't get seasick. I don't think you could do this job if you got seasick," he says.

"I mean, I did have a 2IC in the 2017 Hobart who did get seasick, but somehow he coped.

"I dunno how he did it, but he coped and he'd get up every shift. He'd get up and spew his guts out and do what he had to do and he'd go back to sleep — the next shift the same."

Bell has seen plenty of different conditions in his time doing the Hobart — this year will be his sixth.

"The only surprise was in 2019 when the fires were on, those fires just created a massive micro-climate," he says.

"For example, we got becalmed off St Helen's and then we picked up wind and we got to Tasman Island.

"Then when we turned into Storm Bay, instead of it being freezing, that wind was so hot [and] blowing at about 35 knots (64.8km/h) that the stanchions, the stainless steel stanchions, people leaned up against them and they got burned.

"It was like 40 degrees and driven by the fires around Eden, across Bass Strait, and the northerly was just amazing."

What does Bell hope to get from this year's race?

"I'm 73, 74 next year and I know that I can't keep doing this for that much longer," he says.

"Whether this will be the last or the second to last, I don't know.

"But then if you stop then you're not going back, are you?"

There is another driving force behind this year's race.

"Peter Rodgers, who was a good friend of mine, the previous owner, a real character in Sydney, he passed away in December last year," Bell says.

"And we promised [Rodger's wife] Pat that we would make some gesture with that. So we're having Peter Rodgers Memorial Race on our jerseys this year."

The Peter Rodgers Memorial Race

As the crew is gathered in Sydney to prepare for the race, Rodgers will be on most of their minds.

A man of many talents, Rodgers was born in Guyra, NSW, and went to school in Sydney before having a wide range of experiences, including living in Africa in the 1960s and 70s, working as a deep-sea abalone diver and spear fisherman.

His main career was as a liquidator and chartered accountant, but his other love was sailing. Aside from 18 Sydney to Hobart races, Rodgers took part in several editions of the Lord Howe Island yacht race, a now-discontinued contest that was a Category 1 race (the highest level of offshore race, like the Sydney to Hobart).

O'Dea was the 2IC for the former owner over many races and has been involved with the boat on and off for many years.

He says Rodgers, who died aged 86, was a personality but not a hands-on skipper.

"He tended to keep out of things a lot, decisions like what direction to go and what sails to put up. But he really, really enjoyed it [sailing and the race]," O'Dea says.

"He put a lot of money into the boat and a lot of time, he was very dedicated.

"I think it was his escape. He was running a business, a big accountancy firm in the city, and I think that managerial task and all that responsibility, I think he needed some sort of escape from that, and sailing was it."

One story O'Dea remembers fondly involves the Iron Pot Lighthouse, a red and white landmark for sailors on the edge of the Derwent River that marks the start of the final section of the race.

"Every single time we went past this — and he [Rodgers] would say 'if I'm asleep when we get to the Iron Pot, wake me up' — he'd yell and scream at it," O'Dea says.

"He was an eccentric fella, and quite funny — he used to swear at this damn thing really loud, thank God there weren't any houses around.

"He'd say 'you've cost me thousands and thousands of dollars, you bloody thing, you make me come down here every year'.

"He'd have us all in stitches on the deck, but that is what that race is all about — memories of things like that. And then [after the outburst] he'd just go downstairs and have a sleep. Iron Pot abuse."

Whereas Bell came to sailing late, O'Dea has been doing it nearly all his life.

His career involves the water too as he is a shipwright, or boat builder.

"I was lucky enough to be born near Middle Harbour [in Sydney] and that's what we did in the school holidays was boats, boats, boats," he says.

"It taught us all at an early age how to read the breeze and read the currents."

O'Dea was a determined sailor, with lofty dreams. He remembers listening to broadcasts of the America's Cup on a crystal radio set in his room in the '60s.

He went on to help build five America's Cup boats, most with the great Syd Fischer, and was on the extended sailing list for Steak N'Kidney in the 1987 challenger series.

His first Sydney to Hobart was in 1984, one of the worst years in the race's history.

Asked why people race in these big races over and over, he replies:

"Probably because you forget about all the bad things [about the race]. You've got 12 months to forget about it," O'Dea says.

"When I did my '84 race it took me four years to go back and do another one. The '84 race was a particularly hard race and it was the first time we actually lost someone in the race.

"We made it [home safely] but it was really, really tough."

This year, She will make her 23rd race trip to Hobart, placing it seventh in the all-time list behind Bacardi, which this year will race for the 32nd time.

"[She is] 43 foot long and it's 43 years old. It's older than my car, and I think that's old," O'Dea says.

"People say 'wow, the car's still running', but I tinker with it … and I work on it. 

"I'm proud of the old car and I'm proud of this old yacht.

"And it's been very successful over the years, three times it's won overall PHS, division one and division two — 2009, 2012 and 2013.

"We rely on heavy weather and attrition compared to the lighter boats that don't last there that long when it's really, really rough.

"We cane it pretty hard out there … we push it to the max."

Asked what's bringing him back to this boat once again, O'Dea cites the memorial for Rodgers, but says there's much more that grabs him for this world-famous race.

"That is part of it [remembering Peter], but the rest of it is me just enjoying that boat, the way it sails. I can trust it," O'Dea says.

"I could be on a lighter boat, and if conditions are right you could outpace everybody.

"I could possibly get on a maxi boat if I really wanted to, but I prefer to be on a smaller boat with eight people that I can relate to. 

"And we all learn off each other."

The 80th edition of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race will begin on Boxing Day at 1pm AEDT. You can follow day one of the race in ABC's live blog from midday AEDT.