The mother and daughter team who took on the longest longitudinal yacht race in the world

Competing in the Melbourne Osaka Cup is an epic mother-daughter adventure for Annette Hesselmans and Sophie Snijders

Fika rolls in the swell as Sophie clings to the mast. Twenty-four hours since we left Melbourne, we are sailing through Bass Strait, notorious for its gale force winds and nasty seas.

I hoist Sophie skyward towards the masthead and, with each roll, look up to check her progress. Her movement becomes increasingly precarious, like a human pendulum. I watch my daughter wrap her long limbs around every available hold to prevent her being flung into the mast. I dread to wonder what Sophie will find at the top. It’s only day two and I admit to feeling a little defeated: we have over 5,000 miles to go.

It has been a tough 24 hours. My inner critic is berating my decision to take us offshore to avoid a predicted wind hole between us and Australia’s Victorian coast. These light conditions are uncharacteristic of Bass Strait. The race tracker only reinforces my foolishness. The rest of the fleet is sailing swiftly north-east. Meanwhile we are ghosting along heading south-east towards Tasmania, next stop: Antarctica!

Fika is running under symmetric spinnaker. The wind continues to veer northwards and I’m not sure what the right tactic is. Regardless, it’s time to sock the spinnaker and lower it. My heart sinks when I realise the halyard is jammed and the spinnaker will not come down. But there’s no time for self-pity. This is the sail of a lifetime. A priceless journey with my incredible daughter. We are sailing in the Melbourne Osaka Cup; double-handed, non-stop from Australia to Japan.

Melbourne Osaka Cup

This race has been on my mind since I watched the start of the first Melbourne Osaka Cup in 1987 aboard my father’s timber motorboat. I was a sailing-obsessed teenager believing I one day would sail around the world just like my idols, Naomi James and Claire Francis.

At 5,500 miles the Melbourne Osaka Cup is the longest longitudinal yacht race in the world and the equivalent of eight Sydney to Hobart yacht races. Competitors sail from 38°S to 34°N, traversing many weather systems, and travelling backward through the seasons from autumn in Melbourne to summer at the equator and spring in Japan, via the Tasman, Coral, and Solomon Seas, and North Pacific. It is held approximately every five years.

In 2025, crew ages ranged from 27 to 76 years, with six female sailors. The 16 yachts included every conceivable style, from an S&S 34, Class 40s, J-Boats, one-off designs, – such as the Reichel-Pugh Alive with a pro crew – and cruising yachts including our Najad 490, Fika.

Having competed in the 2018 Melbourne Osaka Cup, I found the race truly life changing. It is a humbling experience feeling the enormity of the vast ocean. Coping with the incredibly challenging light winds and lack of progress at times teaches patience, perseverance and humility. Successfully completing the 2018 race gave me the confidence to start my own sailing adventure business, which is now an RYA Training Centre.

Co-skippers

After the 2018 race, my then-20-year-old daughter, Sophie, offered to be my first mate for the return voyage back to Australia. We set sail for what Sophie described initially, and naively, as a sunset cruise. It soon became rudely apparent that the delivery would be anything but with constant shipping, squalls, heat and discomfort aboard the spartan racing yacht I sailed at the time.

On the two-month passage home Sophie proved invaluable and I cherished every moment. Following our return, Sophie moved aboard her own yacht, Nakama, and began sailing around Australia while completing her degree and documenting her travels on YouTube (@SlimSophSailingNakama). So I didn’t hesitate to enter the 2025 race – nor to ask Sophie if she’d be my co-skipper.

I am incredibly fortunate to have the most beautiful yacht to sail on our adventure. Fika is the backbone of my sail training business, and we spend much of our time plying the oceans while sharing knowledge, skills and hopefully developing the confidence of all who sail aboard. Designed by Judel Vrolijk, it’s a Najad 490, built in Sweden in 2001. With no intention to swap Fika for a fancy racing yacht, Sophie and I set about preparing her for the marathon sail from Melbourne to Osaka.

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With her fine lines and outstanding design, the Najad 490 is a seakindly yacht. As dogged as her owner, when conditions deteriorate she just knuckles down and gets on with the job. Despite her weight (19 tonnes), Fika performs well and can easily make 200 miles a day on passage. With a versatile cutter rig she’s well set up for offshore sailing, though we have tried to simplify by replacing the furling boom with a conventional boom and single line reefing leading to the centre cockpit.

Our training schedule included a 750-mile sail out to Lord Howe Island, and our qualifying race: the Rolex Sydney-Hobart (in which we won the double-handed PHS Division). With each training sail, we tweaked Fika’s deck set-up and tested our original spinnakers and second-hand Code 0. Each training sail also reinforced how compatible Sophie and I are as a team. In the seven years since that delivery, I felt my daughter had become my sailing peer.

The two months leading up to the race were spent in Melbourne. Both my elderly parents were hospitalised six weeks before the start. My time became focused on mum and dad rather than the race. At times I felt incredibly selfish to be even thinking about starting, and seriously wondered if we would make it. My husband, Gerry, and Sophie’s partner, Simon, worked tirelessly to support us and help prepare Fika. Despite the sadness of leaving my parents, it was a huge relief to finally cross the start line.

Bass Strait

Shortly after the start, we find ourselves in this predicament in Bass Strait. Besides the stuck spinnaker halyard, our hydraulic boom vang is faulty, greedily gulping all the hydraulic fluid required to work not only the vang but the backstay and babystay.

One step at a time, we tackle each of the issues. At the masthead, Sophie discovers the halyard soft shackle is caught around another fitting but is able to free it. We jury rig a Dyneema rope boom vang, then bleed and refill the hydraulic system with oil after isolating the vang from the more critical backstay. After four days we head offshore to find the north-bound East Australian Current. I feel immensely proud of the two of us as we problem solve.

At last we start making progress. I turn the race tracker back on and watch as we slowly rejoin the main fleet. We capture the tradewinds and make our way northwards along the Australian coast some 100 miles offshore. We push Fika as hard as possible, flying the spinnaker and Code 0 well into the night, sacrificing precious sleep for speed. Fika is in her element powering along on a broad reach. The gap to the fleet reduces to 5 miles from our nearest competitor Magellan, a one-off Knoop 39. It’s a game of snakes and ladders, and we are climbing a ladder.

As we shed layers of clothing with the warming weather, we settle into a lovely routine sharing our meals, taking it in turns to catch up on sleep during the day, then sitting on the side deck in the shade for a ‘happy hour’ of soda water and nibbles. I relish our time together.

A low pressure trough disrupts our progress and prematurely stifles the south-east trades. The wind backs to the north-east and then north. The dice has rolled and we have landed on a snake. Our progress slows in lightening winds and the fleet sneaks ahead. We fly the Code 0 and chafe through the outer sheath of the halyard. With a bulging halyard we are unable to lower the sail. At midnight, Sophie and I mouse a spare while cutting the deformed one away. With success, we lower the Code 0 in the strengthening wind.

Solomon Sea

The temperature continues to rise as we inch closer towards the equator. Saltwater baths bring brief, welcome relief. We tack our way north, averaging just three miles an hour towards the entrance to the Solomon Sea. At 13°S the ocean resembles a mirror, the doldrums still a few hundred miles away.

Our progress is excruciatingly slow through the Solomon Sea as we experience light to no wind, headwinds, thunderstorm cells and constant squalls. If we are doing greater than one knot, we are veritably hooning along.

Sophie and I work hard to keep Fika moving with our limited sail wardrobe. We use the radar to monitor squalls, timing each reef to within a nautical mile of being hit. We’re relieved whenever a storm cell and rain squall passes to the north or south of us.

Unfortunately there are times when there’s no escape. Squalls torment us, each bringing a minute of wind before it changes its mind in direction and strength. Then they get bored, toss us out like a play toy and move on. We’re inevitably left wallowing, usually pointing in the wrong direction. The larger storm cells bring torrential rain, 30-plus knots of wind and scary electrical storms. One night, Sophie and I cower in the cockpit with bolts of lightning and deafening thunder overhead. It lasts for an hour.

Mirror calm

There are, however, moments of sheer beauty. Periods of no wind often bring a glassy sea. We drop the sails and marvel at the stars and planets reflecting on the mirror-like ocean. I stop looking at the race tracker, as I end up berating myself for each mile lost to the competitors.

I feel powerless when our progress is poor, and give myself pep talks to sail our own race. I feel myself learning the gift of patience and perseverance. Sophie is much more at peace with our situation, she calmly listens to my moaning and puts it all in perspective. I try to mimic the tranquillity surrounding us.

It is hard to know where the doldrums start and finish, but we continue to experience calms and squalls until approximately 2°S. The Code 0 is a godsend and keeps Fika moving in the slightest breeze, until it tears from luff to leech. Our wings are clipped and we drift westwards with the equatorial current, trying to fight it whenever there is wind.

We are hit by squalls, spat out, and spun around. I stop fighting the tide and try to be at peace with the doldrums. The nights are magnificent and when there is no swell, we drop the sails and drift while the sea and sky become one.

The strain on Fika from the constant slatting is noticeable, and at times distressing, with halyard chafe, mainsail cars coming apart and the main traveller loosening and leaking. We reef or drop the mainsail to prevent damage, use the preventer to hold the boom when the main is up. It is a never ending battle.

Flocks of small cumulus puffs herald the arrival of the north-east trades. Our spirits rise with our newfound movement and we revel in making progress once again. Fika glides along on a close reach under full sail and staysail. We are once again gaining on Magellan.

Pacific dreams

With our newfound freedom from constant sail changes, we watch the world go by from the cockpit, awestruck at the beauty surrounding us. The ocean is a magnificent blue. It is alive and dancing, seducing us with its vibrancy. Flying fish, false killer whales, booby birds and giant tuna grace Fika’s presence. I’m spellbound by the clouds and realise I can predict the day ahead by their behaviour and size. Time is marked by the phases of the moon, its light and reflection on the dark ocean bringing comfort to our night watches.

We cross the equator and mark the milestone with an offering of rum to King Neptune. I make us Turks Head bracelets to mark the occasion, and we celebrate with pancakes. This is Sophie’s second crossing and my third.

All the while there is never-ending navigation and tactics to decode. Sophie and I spend each morning uploading GRIB files and working out the best strategy for passing through the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marianna Islands. Having made a decision, I then doubt myself when I see the other yachts taking different routes through the islands. We opt for the rhumb line, and I remind myself, again, to sail our own race. Sophie is steadfastly unfazed.

Osaka Wan

With 1,000 miles to go we feel like we are almost there, but know that our greatest challenge is yet to come. We leave the tradewinds and sail into the variables. As we inch closer to Japan shipping increases and we plan our final leg weaving our way through the Kuroshio Current to exploit its northbound flow.

The weather is moody and we prepare for low pressure systems sweeping across the course. Following a gale warning we make our final approach towards the entrance to Kii Suido, the entrance to Osaka Bay. With no moon, and building wind and seas, we sail blindly through the night. The phosphorescence outlines the breaking waves behind us. Fika is goosewinged with reefed sails, surfing down waves at 14-15 knots. It is a black night with a cacophony of ships flashing on our AIS and radar. We are back to chasing Magellan hard, now 12 miles ahead.

I hope that our luck holds and we don’t entangle the multitude of fishing floats and matted nylon rope ‘islands’ we’ve seen during daylight hours. With Fika’s skeg-hung rudder we’re susceptible to snagging flotsam.

By dawn, we are in fog with ships surrounding us. Horns sound every few minutes. We have just 70 miles to go and Sophie and I are tired. I know these last miles may take us 24 hours as the winds are fickle in the Osaka Wan. I remind us both that we need to stay safe and patient – in 2018 five yachts finished within hours of each other. All of us lost sense and many yachts did more damage in the final 50 miles than the whole race.

Sophie tackles each ship and its impending collision one by one. The wind eases and we favour the western side of Kii Suido which is predicted to have more wind. We are gaining on Magellan, painstakingly close to the finish. Inch by inch we close in. By dusk we ghost through the Yura Seto, the neck between the Kii Suido and Osaka Wan. There is a Traffic Separation Scheme with ships funnelling through. With luck, a gap opens between ships and we cross through it without being run down.

The final hours of our race are incredibly tense as we pass Magellan, only for them to overtake us again. We fall back into a tacking duel up Osaka Wan. By necessity rather than strategy we tack side by side, avoiding unlit seaweed farms, anchored barges, ships, tugs and lumps of reclaimed land.

The wind increases from the north. In 20 knots, we are tacking Fika like a dinghy, Sophie at the helm. With Fika’s huge overlapping headsail, in each tack the headsail threatens to entangle with the staysail before breaking free. I heave on the sheet with all my might. Fika is pointing high, slightly overpowered and we feather her up with the gusts.

There is light pollution and obstacles everywhere as Magellan and Fika blindly wrestle their way towards the finish. We are so amazed that after 5,500 miles we can be within metres of our competitors, a father and daughter team – this race really is a family affair. We cross the line in chaos, unsure where the virtual mark is. The VHF booms to life as the Japanese volunteers tell us we have finished. Magellan had snuck across nine minutes ahead having favoured the windward end. Regardless, we are blown away with excitement.

Sophie and I are in disbelief at what we have achieved. We spent 38 days at sea together and sailed over 5,500 miles racing our beloved cruising yacht. We sailed through equatorial heat, emotional highs and lows; beauty and joy. I am immensely proud of my daughter, her capability, empathy, resilience and strength, and honoured to be part of this great race.

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