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Dare to be Ambitious

Home 2026 Dare to be Ambitious

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Chris Dare bought Ambition sixteen months ago to do one thing: race the Rolex Sydney Hobart alongside his son Lockie. That first crack at it ended early, retired with a keel bolt issue.

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This weekend, on a different racetrack, the boat's been going head to head with defending champions ten feet longer than her and Admiral's Cup competitors.

Dare’s son had raced Hobarts before on other boats, but never with his father. “So we kind of put a program together last year and built it around that.” The keel issue cut that campaign short, but the ambition, both the boat and the idea, has stuck around.

Whether it sticks around much longer is genuinely up in the air. Ambition is currently for sale, and Dare is candid about not wanting to commit to years and years of ocean racing for its own sake. “I certainly would like to complete a Hobart with Lockie, that’s for sure,” he said. “But I don’t really want to have an ocean racing program for another three or four years either. That said, if we keep the boat, I’m pretty fine with that as well.” If Ambition is still his come Christmas, the plan is simple: she’ll be on the start line on Boxing Day.

Chris Dare preparing in December 2025 for the Rolex Sydney Hobart - Credit: CYCA | Salty Dingo

The season so far has been a proving ground. Ambition raced inshore in the Super 40 Series, going head to head with Admiral’s Cup competitors boats like Beau Ideal and (yes) Back 2 Black. “It was great sailing against those boats,” Dare said, “and I think that’s helped us a lot in relation to getting to know the boat and how to get it to go quicker.”

That preparation showed on the racetrack this weekend, where Ambition spent long stretches matching it with boats ten feet longer. Dare puts it down to a combination of design and crew work.

“The 42s, I think, are quite well suited to hanging on to the 52s, probably in reaching and running conditions below 15 knots, which we saw a lot of,” he said. “So I think it fell into the strong suit of the boat, but you still have to sail it well. At times we felt we were equally as quick as them.”

That crew is a deliberate mix. Dare brought in a handful of long time ocean racing mates alongside a younger contingent of Lockie’s friends, most of them getting their first taste of Grand Prix level sailing. “We’re not a professional crew by any means, that’s not how I like to run my sailing programs,” Dare said. “We’re more strong Corinthian based.” Sydney Hobart winning Navigator Alex Nolan joined the program for this race for the first time and, in Dare’s words, “did an amazing job navigating us through the transitions over the last day or two. It was particularly tough.”

At time of writing, Ambition sits provisionally third on IRC, with Back 2 Black holding the top spot. The two boats have raced each other closely all season, and Dare doesn’t hide his respect for the rivalry. “It’s great to race against Sean (Langman) and his team,” he said. “It was super tight racing. They managed to get away off the coast yesterday, and at one point it was just too hard to close the gap.”

With the double handers still to finish and the leaderboard not yet settled, Dare is holding out hope for a late move. “The Double Handers have got a fair way to come, so hopefully we might be able to jump up the board to second,” he said. “We’ll a second or a third and continue to build our campaign.”

Whatever the final placing, Dare is treating this campaign as exactly what it was always meant to be, to see how far ambition, in both senses of the word, can take them.