So you don’t have a boat to barrack for in this year’s Sydney To Hobart? Here’s a suggestion: Perpetual Loyal. This is the 100-foot super-maxi that each year invites a batch of elite sportspeople to take the plunge and race as crew. Since their first tilt in 2009, they’ve raised around $3 million for children’s hospital charities through the Loyal Foundation. The boat is owned by Sydney-based accountant-to-the-stars Anthony Bell. They’ve won it once, in 2011, out-manoeuvring Wild Oats XI in a ding-dong stoush up the Derwent. But how do you train up a crew of elite landlubbing athletes to take on the iconic 628 nautical mile race and, at the very least, not get in the way? You appoint “Black” Joe Akacich as general manager of the boat, that’s how. With a Navy background, including a stint of gruelling diver training with HMAS Penguin, and a strong background in all things marine (he has managed boats and campaigns for the likes of Keith Williams and Alan Bond), Black brings an iron fist wrapped in a tungsten glove, all delivered in a charismatic growl. The 56-year-old manages all aspects of the boat, and guards the safety of his ring-ins like a Rottweiler. He also doesn’t mind a chat, and sat down with IS editor Graem Sims to  tell us how he does it. We present him unfiltered. Caution: language warning.

LANDLUBBERS

“When you get celebrities doing the Hobart for the first time, what ends up happening is that they build up a heap of fever in their own mind. Because everybody’s giving them all this anecdotal stuff ... ‘Aw Hobart, 1998, five people died, this happened and that happened.’ So it’s like a 100 metre sprint going off in their head. They’re thinking of all the things that are possibly going to happen to them, but in the end Mother Nature will serve up whatever she serves up  and you’ve just got to find ways to deal with  it. Sure, you’ve got to be fit and strong and all the rest of the usual stuff, but you’ve got to have a good mind. You have got to be able to remain calm and rational and understand A) that there’s a lot of pros on the boat who aren’t going to let you come to any grief, and B) look after yourself and communicate.

“In our crew we run no less than 18 pros, then  we have six celebs or athletes. This year I’ve got Michael Clarke, Erin Molan, Phil Waugh, Anthony Minichiello, Danny Green and Kurt Beale. I have had a couple of yarns with them and already it’s that fever – they get caught up in stories of people who have done it previously. Like in 2010, I took down Layne Beachley. Now Layne, she is an impressive human. Any sheila who can get on a 60-foot wave and own it, whoah. But that ride takes just minutes. The killer with the Hobart, the big killer, is time. Cos there’s nowhere to go. Your best friend, really, is a shady tree. And there’s fucken none out there. Not one. You can take a little bit of dirt in your pocket but it’s not going to help you. So you’ve really got to get your spanners on your brain and know that this is not for the remainder of my life, this is only going to be for a day and a half, two days – this blow right now is consuming me, but it’s not going to be like this forever. You’ve got to have that little bit of hardener in your head, which 99 percent of these guys have, because they’re sportspeople and they get it; they understand pressure and they understand commitment. They understand what it’s all about.

“But there are gradients of differences when you get celebrities or sportspeople; there are the ones who will just keep going; in rough weather they’ll be up, they’ll do their job, they’ll spew all over themselves, me, everybody else, but they’ll keep going, no matter what.

“Layne found it heavy going. In the end I was in her face down below and I said, ‘Now Layney, you’ve shaken my hand; the next step for me is dropping a Stemetil [anti nausea] suppository in your sphincty. So you wanna go first knuckle, second knuckle or third knuckle?’ And she goes, ‘I’m up, Black, I’m up! I’m up!’ We got her up, got her on deck. She was as sick as a dog. But you’ve just got to punch through it. Sea sickness will eat you. It’s so consuming. But everyone’s busy.”

HEROES

“I cast all the celebs. I wrangle them, run after them, but I don’t run after them. I don’t want to sound brutal, but in the end for me a sports-person, really ...  they’re not celebrities for me. If you hit a golf ball or a cricket ball, you can play rugby, look yeah, that’s impressive, but am I going to go out of my way to meet you because you’re an iconic human being? No. But a guy like the doctor who performed open heart surgery on my daughter in 2009? Impressive human. Clever. Under pressure. And handles that pressure where one wrong move, that person dies, and those people who are left behind, their lives are changed forever. He’s not looking for limelight or celebrityism. Guys like that, they’re bona fide Australians of the Year. Not footballers or basketball players.

“But you get guys like Clarke ... he does a lot, a LOT, for people. Phil Kearns, one of the most }impressive rugby union players I’ve ever met. He is a freak. He’s clever, he’s a finance guy, raises so much charity for kids, and he’s an under-the-radar dude. He just wants to be part of the answer, not part of the problem. And that’s not dissimilar to guys like Grant Hackett. Hackett came with me in ‘09. Freak. Hoh. Animal. Strong. And he went through some pain because he had a bum steer. Someone said to him that the best thing to do is take some talcum powder to keep your balls and everything dry. He came to see me halfway through the race and he’s gone, ‘Black, I’m barely able to move.’  And I’ve gone, ‘What’s wrong, mate?’ And he’s gone, ‘My balls are fucken red raw. I dunno what’s going on.’ So I’ve gone, ‘Get ’em out.’ And he’s whipped them out, and they are red raw, and I’ve gone, ‘What’s this white stuff?’ He said powder. I said, ‘Mate, what the fuck are you doing putting powder on?’ It’s just like putting a handful of sand in there.”

CREW

“So I employ specific trimmers, a couple of specific steerers, a couple of bowmen, so that we have this deep DNA, this technical skeleton, on board. Then we think about the celebrities. And I’m not interested in skill – first and foremost I want to measure someone up on attitude. And if they’re out of hand, I’ll fucken tell ’em. I’ll say, ‘Now listen, you’ve got your head up your arse. While you’re on the dock do what you like. Step on that boat and you do exactly what I tell you to do. I won’t be asking, I’ll be telling. You need to get that clear. When we get back to the dock, if you think I’m captain cunt, unreal, I don’t mind. As long as you come home and you’ve got all your fingers, and you can tell your stories, that’s great.’  I want to win, but it’s a by-product of doing the right thing. The short version of it is ‘fit in or fuck off’.

“So you’ve got Karl Stefanovic and Larry Emdur sailing on the same boat. There’s a couple of egos all by themselves! And they’re great mates now. There’s a bit of banter from time to time, but it’s more for public interest. And then you throw in the mix Anthony [Bell] ... he is just driven out of his skin. He has that much going on. You have put all of those things in one boat, it’s tricky. Plus you’ve got the egos of pro sailors ... ”

DUTIES

“These are a high-tech, contemporary sailboat. Our engine runs all the time to power the hydraulics. There’s no grinders; it’s all push-button. Hoisting, sheeting on, trimming, canting keels, all brand-spanking, all push-button. So their tasks during a race is lugging sails, taking instructions from someone, pushing those buttons, do this now when I tell you. Those sorts of things. We get them wrapping sails. And they’re big sails. Heavy gear.

“It is sort of organised chaos really, because when it’s on, it’s on. When you are reaching 35 knots, you are lit up – there is a lot of water, everyone’s compressed down the back of the boat. There’s a small area, and you’ve got to try and get 18 people in there, to get all the weight aft. I will put water in those outboard tanks, I’ll put people down there, I’ll move as much gear as allowable to that area, and just send ’er.”

PREP

“When Anthony Minichiello first came in 2011, [club CEO] Steve Noyce from Eastern Suburbs had this big concern because he was still playing football. And I said to him, ‘What’s your biggest concern?’ And he said, ‘Well, he’s not a very good swimmer.’ And I said to him, ‘No worries, it’s a fucken yacht race, not a swimming race. If it was a swimming race we wouldn’t be bringing him. The trick is to stay on the boat. We’re not planning to do any swimming. But he’ll have to do some survival at sea training.’

“I make them all do it. It is a full training course in the pool at the Qantas training facility at Mascot. It is a full day. They have to get in the water with their wet weather gear on; they’ve actually got to get into a raft, the lights are off, rain gets turned on ... If you can’t cut it there then I will cut you.

“They do their own fitness work. I train them on the boat. They will come with us on all sessions, depending on their commitments. They will end up doing six-to-ten sessions on board, full days sailing, upwind, downwind, being involved in lots of different jobs. If we get to a stage where there’s something going a little bit wrong, which happens often on these boats, things break and little things happen, then I’ll isolate them to a safe zone which is aft of the mainsheet traveller. So they’ll hang down there and they won’t move until I tell them to. And they’re well-behaved – they’re great.”

CROOK

“This year we’ve got Erin Molan coming with us; she says she gets seasick in a bathtub, and so does Clarkey. But as I said to them both, ‘You know, if you’re going to be seasick, worse comes to worse you’re only going to be seasick for half a day. And then you’re going to fall into the regime of getting used to it, or the weather will abate and we’ll sail on a different angle and it’ll be much better. But you need to harden up in your head. You’ve got no one shooting at you. You’re just a little bit seasick so it’s a matter of you switching off your ‘woe is me, I’m sick’ to ‘oh well, there’s some kid lying in hospital that I’m raising money for, and all I’ve got to do is put up with this for another 12 hours.’ As soon as I say that to them it crushes them.”

SUSTENANCE

“We’re sponsored by a company called Sonoma. They do a lot of whole foods. We used to run freeze-dried food, and if the race was more than 1000 mile I’d probably still do that. In 09 and 10  we did freeze-dried, but then we picked up Sonoma in 11 and they pretty much got it right. And we’ve used them since. These are pre-packaged meals – there’s only a few of us who can cope down there that long prepping all that stuff up, so you get it all out, it’s in little packs, normally enough to serve 10-12 people.

“I run a three-watch system on board, so out of the 24 you’ve got eight people that are on; eight on standby who have just come off watch, so they’re still dressed and ready to go but they’re either laying down or resting; then you’ve got eight off.”

SLEEP

“It is a big thing where people say, ‘I’ll be right,  I’ll just stay awake the whole time.’ Well, you’re actually doing me a disservice by doing that because you’re not resting. You are not prepared. On your off-watch, you need to rest. The only time I’ll ever go all hands on deck is if there was something imminent and we have to get ’em off.

“The sleep techniques are really difficult for celebrities. It’s a mind thing.”

2015

“Anthony Bell is an interesting bloke. Like, he’s just a brutal, brutal competitor. Brutal. We did well in our first boat in ’09, ’10 getting better, ’11 we won. In these types of races so many things have to line up: crew, people, boat, navigation, meteorology, the DNA of how you put it together, the rightness, the wrongness, a teaspoon of luck sprinkled over the whole thing ... In 2011 all of those things were beautifully laying over each other like a Sara Lee fucken cake. Fucken fantastic. We beat Wild Oats by three minutes and eight seconds. Mate, they were right behind us, and we just eased them into this little bit of a carpark ... Obviously they’re going to cover us, and they followed us into a little cul-de-sac, and we couldn’t believe it. We pulled out a little bit early and he was going nowhere. We gybed out of there and schoop. He goes down there: parked.

“This year I have a couple of secret weapons for the boat up my sleeve that I haven’t told anyone about yet except Anthony. Being a heavyweight fighter, if you lose weight you lose strength, no two ways about it; you don’t have that punch, that balance that you used to have. We’re actually putting a bit more weight on to get the balance back after last year, and there’s a couple of other areas where I can put weight on when I want to and flick it when I want to. So it will be interesting this year. There’s a lot going on.”