Despite their traumatic experience in a wild storm near the end of the last Sydney to Gold Coast Race, husband-and-wife team Michael and Audrey Brown are facing up to their toughest ocean race in this year’s Sydney to Hobart with two years of ocean racing experience behind them. Russell Dean II is one of the 200 or so East Coast 31s built by Bruce Fairlie at Gosford, NSW, a sistership finishing second in 1987 Lord Howe race.