Every year at Christmas, the emotions stir deep in the soul of an old sailor. It’s a joyous time to spend time with family and friends, but as the armada of boats streaks out of Sydney Harbour on Boxing Day bound for Hobart, Paul Lumtin pauses to reflect.
In 1998, he set sail in the bluewater classic on the Winston Churchill, a vintage timber beauty that had been one of nine vessels in the inaugural Sydney to Hobart more than half a century earlier. She had been restored and was a major attraction for her crew.
Nine men climbed aboard the Winston Churchill that year. Only six returned.
Barraged by unexpected monster southerly swells, the Winston Churchill sunk after being barrelled by a 25-metre wave in the Pacific Ocean, throwing her crew across the deck and in the cabins below.
Lumtin had been asleep at the time, off guard. But within minutes, he was clinging to one of two life rafts deployed to try to save the crew. He later had to desperately use a boot to bail water from the stricken craft.
He spent almost a day-and-a-half, in his words, “clinging to a bit of plastic” as the life raft disintegrated.
Paul Lumtin (second from left) with survivors of the Winston Churchill after the Sydney to Hobart in 1998.Credit: Fairfax Photographic
Lumtin and three others survived on their ill-equipped raft, repeatedly telling each other throughout the ordeal: “I don’t care when they find us, I don’t care how they find us, they will find us.“
They were eventually winched to safety by a rescue helicopter. All admitted they wouldn’t have survived another night in the mountainous seas.
But among the Winston Churchill crew who had sought sanctuary on another life raft, three men died: John Dean, James Lawler and Michael Bannister.
“I think about it when the race comes along every year,” Lumtin says. “We all struggled with it for a couple of years after it happened, and we all had a fair bit of trauma. We all manage it in our own ways.
“It was tough. We lost three blokes off our boat and those waves are something you don’t like to see too often.
Paul Lumtin, who survived the tragic Sydney to Hobart in 1998, pictured with the horse he part owns, Storm Boy, before The Everest.Credit: Nick Moir
“I’m a very lucky man.”
On Saturday, a horse Lumtin named himself and bought when it was walked into the beer garden of a western Sydney pub will try to make a miracle Sydney to Hobart survivor even luckier when he contests The Everest at Royal Randwick.
Lumtin has only owned a few racehorses beforehand. But when organising a lunch of businessmen last year, he wrote to trainer Gai Waterhouse about whether she would speak to the gathering. His other option was boxer Jeff Fenech.
At first, Lumtin didn’t get any response from Waterhouse. He tried again.
Then Waterhouse’s staff told him she wasn’t doing many speaking engagements these days. Down to his last chance, Lumtin just invited Waterhouse to lunch, no formal speaking role, just a chance to spend some time with a few racing enthusiasts.
“She wrote to me and said, ‘Can I bring a couple of horses along with me?’ I said, ‘I suppose so’,” Lumtin laughs.
“A mate of mine who owns the Log Cabin [at Penrith], he’s in the group as well, I rang him up and said, ‘Can we get a couple of horses in the beer garden because Gai wants to do a little parade?’
“He said, ‘Yeah, OK. We won’t tell anyone about it, but we can do it’.”
Gai Waterhouse speaking to drinkers in the beer garden of the Log Cabin about Storm Boy.
True to her word, Waterhouse brought two horses in a transport truck to the pub: one a filly, and the other a colt by stallion Justify, who she decided to add at the last minute.
While Waterhouse spoke about the filly, the businessmen couldn’t help but hear the noise the raucous colt was making in the truck. By the time he walked into the beer garden, they were hooked. A group of them were wrangled into taking a 20 per cent share.
“It was just fantastic and I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” Lumtin laughs. “I know Gai’s people were horrified when they found out what she was doing.
“She walked the filly and it did a little bit of a parade. Then you see him in the flesh and he’s a monster of a horse. Everyone’s jaw just dropped. We went, ‘Holy crap, that’s a racehorse’.”
Lumtin and his syndicate quickly hustled to find the cash, and bought a 20 per cent share that day for about $60,000. They later sold part of their stake to global breeding giant Coolmore, but retain a smaller share in Storm Boy.
“To think someone can go to the pub, have a drink and walk away, only for six months later the horse to be sold for $26 million … nowhere else in the world can you think of that happening,” Waterhouse said.
Storm Boy, named by Lumtin after the Australian film about a lonely boy and his pelicans (the colt’s dam is named Pelican), will be one of two runners for Waterhouse and co-trainer Adrian Bott in The Everest, the $20 million race which will be held before what is expected to be a record modern day crowd.
Organisers are awaiting advice on whether King Charles III will attend the meeting as part of his royal tour after being invited to watch a race named in his honour as well as The Everest, the world’s richest horse race on turf.
“I have to pinch myself I actually have a share in a horse running in The Everest,” Lumtin says. “That’s incredible. I pinch myself about Storm Boy, I pinch myself I survived that Sydney to Hobart, and even at my age, I still don’t know how I got through and survived.
“It’s one of the mysteries of life.”
