Heat is searing onto the yachts moored in Sydney’s Rushcutters Bay and Pallas Capital co-founder Mark Spring is sitting in the cabin of Highly Sprung, pointing to what he claims is his bed.
It’s a tiny black stretcher wedged at the very end of the back of his boat, which requires serious squatting (or crawling) to reach. Spring pulls on a rope attached to the bed he is perched on, closing it on himself so he faces the hull. “We sleep like this,” he says, adding his dedicated bed is actually the safest spot to be if things turn awry at sea.
For anyone with a hint of claustrophobia, the situation looks terrifying. Spring and his crew are used to it – add it to the list of adjustments made for life at sea. They’re also used to going to the toilet in biodegradable bags and vomiting on the deck.
Spring, who started Pallas Capital in 2016 with Patrick Keenan, Charles Mellick, Dan Gallen and Craig Bannister, doesn’t remember life without sailing. His father was commodore of the YMCA Canberra Sailing Club, and sailing was all he did on weekends and Wednesday nights. He competed from the age of seven until he was 21 years old.
His current yacht is Highly Sprung, a 20-year-old TP52 that he bought three years ago. It was the highest placed TP52 in the 2012 Rolex Sydney Hobart, but Spring, now skipper, is hoping to do even better.
Yachts that compete in the Sydney to Hobart do so in different classes based on rating systems.
Highly Sprung will compete for the Tattersall Cup, which determines a winner decided by handicaps that level the playing field for different boat designs, ages and crew. The yacht won its division in 2021 and placed 8th overall, but struggled in 2023 after experiencing mast issues.
This is the yacht’s third race under Spring’s ownership, but it’s the first time it has been sponsored. When Highly Sprung sails out on December 26 for the 80th edition of what is now officially the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, it will be drenched in the purple colours of Anytime Fitness, a global franchise of health centres where his crew trains.
Spring’s crew is particularly young because he’s scouted five of them from the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia’s Youth Sailing Academy, which began in 1993. Spring receives a handicap for having such young men on board, but he also enjoys their passion and interest in the sport.
His crew typically spend between 30 and 40 days of the year (about 12 overnight), which means the bulk of preparation is done onshore.
Former Balmain Tigers lock and NSW Blues coach Wayne Pearce is one of Spring’s critical ingredients. Pearce is a sports performance expert who has worked with Spring and his businesses for almost 25 years. In the last six, he’s also worked with the Spring’s sailors.
“A lot of the work we do is with personality traits… teaching these young guys that when they communicate, they should always think of the effect of their comments on the person they’re communicating with,” he says.
This kind of work is important given the close quarters the group spends time in and the pressure they can come under if they hit a whale or the wind gets out of control.
When Spring isn’t on the water, he is growing the distribution team of Pallas Capital, an investment manager specialising in commercial real estate debt. Spring formed Pallas with his colleagues after a brief attempt at retirement; he was previously the executive managing director for Asia at BGC Partners.
Sailing is his passion, but Spring says he uses the same skills on board as he does at work.
“When I go on that boat, it feels like I’m going in the office,” he says. “I’ve got to motivate the right people. I’ve got to give clear direction of what the company’s doing.”
The reality of a race like the Sydney to Hobart is that it can get ugly. Spring knows that better than most – when Highly Sprung last competed in 2023, its sail ripped out of the mast.
“We finished … it was shit, horrible and upsetting,” he says.
He says luck, particularly when it comes to weather, is a major factor in how a yacht will finish.
“Let’s say you get everything else right, then you need Lady Luck,” he says. “Our boat goes better upwind than some of the other boats on the handicap, bigger boats but downwind we are really quick.
“If we got us southerly for three days, we don’t have a chance to win – the smaller boats will beat us on handicap. If we get [north-easterly winds] and it is full tilt, no one sleeps … but if you get it wrong by an inch, bad news.”
Sailing has about 77,000 active participants according to a report released by Gemba in July, but it has ambitions to reach 300,000 by 2032, as well as gender parity.
Spring says his way to grow the sport is by mentoring his young crew, mixing them with more experienced sailors. His firm also launched the Pallas Cup in 2022, a sailing event for the company’s investors and partners.
If Spring and his team win the Sydney to Hobart, they will get a Rolex. As for who it will go to?
“One of those kids because that’s their dream,” he says.