Love & War. Peter Shipway in conversation with Mark Chew from Southern Woodenboat Sailing.

There are not many boats that can sail competitively in the Sydney-Hobart one month, and then show up at the Australian Wooden Boat Festival the next, and outshine many of the other more pampered exhibitors. You can make a good case that LOVE & WAR is Australia’s most successful ocean racing yacht. Fifty two years ago she was drawn by Olin Stephens when he was at the peak of his extraordinary powers. Since then she has won the Sydney-Hobart on three occasions, and is rarely in the bottom two thirds of the fleet. In the the recent 2024 event, she again won her division, and came 14th overall, in conditions that were not always her forte. It would be a brave pundit who definitively predicts that, given the right weather, she couldn’t win the event a fourth time!