The two other crew members Bruce Guy, 51, and Phil Skeggs, 35,  had died during the cyclonic storm along with four other sailors in the race, while 48 others were airlifted out, 50 were injured, five boats sunk and 71 of the 115 starter yachts retired. 

It was Traynor’s first ocean rescue, and while his training prepared him for the task, nothing had come close to what he was about to experience, forced to learn from each of the seven rescue’s about how to conduct the next one better.

Battered by the waves, spun by the wind, manoeuvring sailors into safety collars over too-bulky life jackets, while watching out for the winch wire that, if connected with incorrectly, “will chop your arm off”.  

It took 35 minutes to get the Business Post Naiad crew to safety. 

“You have so many things going around in your mind about what you are going to do next, and you are always three steps ahead,” Traynor said.

“There was one instance where I had got the guy into the collar, was ready to go and went to look for the helicopter to give them the thumbs up.

“You are getting beaten around, knocked by the waves, swung and also spinning at times, and you lose your orientation of where it is...Just as I’m ready to go this wave is going across.  I had to turn my head to a 45 degree angle, looking up at these 10 metre waves, before I even glimpsed the sky. That is how big the waves were.”

Traynor said the noise was incredible.

“These helicopters are the noisiest aircraft around but you could barely hear the damn thing over the noise of the ocean, and normally you have a five tonne downdraft that is keeping you in the air but you couldn't even feel it.  The 60 to 70 knot winds were blowing the downdraft away.”

On his fourth rescue down the wire Traynor said the helicopter was forced to rip them out of the water.

“I gave the thumbs up and all of a sudden we were in darkness. A wave had washed over the top of us.  I’ve got this guy I’m attached to, and I’ve got my breath back, and have just taken a breath, and then another wave is washing over me...the helicopter had to rise above the water.  We were ripped out and there was a fair bit of pain, but that was number four winch, so I knew I only had three to go.”   

Traynor was one of ten men and woman who received an Australian Bravery Decoration for his rescue of the seven sailors.

“The surprising fact was that we could get all the seven off...because of the conditions the pilot was able to hover the aircraft so we used less fuel and had enough to get back.”

Traynor said the crew actually used less fuel than they had anticipated, but that one Victorian aircraft landed after a rescue with just 30 seconds of fuel remaining. 

“Every year before the race you look out at the weather and you hope that with all the safety changes that have come since that year, that things are going to go okay.

“It will always stick in your mind, with the waves and the conditions, you can’t forget it too quickly.” 

Twenty years is a long time, a quarter of the average life expectancy, plenty of time for people to live, love, learn and laugh. 

Yet for many who were stuck out in the storm on their broken and failing yachts, the 20 year old memories can appear as raw and brutal as if experienced in the present. For one crew member of Business Post Naiad Robert Matthews the memories are something he tries to avoid like the plague. 

He still sails, even taking part in the 2005 Sydney to Hobart race, and in 2009 wrote the book Cruel Wind: Business Post Naiad and the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race Disaster with journalist Julian Burgess. 

In the book, Matthews describes the conditions.

“I can still hear that scream [of the wind] to this day.  It just lives with me daily and it howls in such a blood curdling way … the spray and rain hitting your face so hard it felt like it would bleed.  Having to scream till [sic] hoarse to make yourself heard by a crewmate only centimetres away,” he wrote. 

Matthews plots their boat’s hellish journey, depicting in detail his experiences, for instance when the boat rolled for a second time and he hung onto the upturned boat for his life. 

“I was desperately trying to hang on ...not clipped onto anything, knowing full well that after the first roll, just how easy it was to get washed off the deck and over the side.  I didn’t want that to happen again,” he wrote.

Of the rescue, Matthews describes being winched from the water.

“We were torn so fast out of the water that I actually ended up with a hernia of my belly button.  My neck snapped back because the [life jacket] was forced into my throat by the harness strop. I felt as though I was being lifted by my neck,” he wrote.

Writing the book was difficult but cathartic. 

“It helped but it still comes back all the time.  How I still go yacht racing, I don’t know.”