From an unheralded race for nine yachts witnessed by a tiny spectator fleet to an iconic Boxing Day event watched by millions, the Sydney to Hobart has come a long way.
The 70th edition of the race will be held this year and just two survivors remain from that first slog to Hobart - Geoff Ruggles, 90, and John Gordon, 88.
Gordon, who tutored Wild Oats XI skipper Mark Richards in the art of sailing, cheerfully describes Ruggles and himself as "the wrecks".
But both men are living treasures, the last direct links to the start of an Australian sporting institution.
They happily pass on their recollections of that first race in December 1945, when the world was still coming to terms with the end of World War II.
"It was more friends going to have a cruise," Ruggles told AAP of the inaugural race.
"That was turned into a race by the influence of (British naval Officer) John Illingworth, who eventuality won (on line honours) because he knew all about racing in the ocean."
While thousands now scramble for vantage points on the foreshore and spectator boats clog the harbour for the Boxing Day start, only a very small amount of people could claim to have seen the birth of the event 69 years ago.
"Only family people who knew what we were about to do and a couple of others," said Ruggles, who was aboard the boat Wayfarer.
He recalled a tough first night at sea when the fleet was buffeted by a southerly gale.
Ruggles said Wayfarers's crew was affected by seasickness.
Wayfarer stopped three times during the race to pull into land, but he revealed it was the shortage of serviceable equipment - as much as ill health and a lack of boat speed - that contributed to it recording the slowest ever Sydney to Hobart passage of 11 days, six hours 20 minutes, a record that will surely stand forever.
"The equipment on the boat, the sails particularly, kept tearing and ripping badly and we had to sew them up and that delayed us everywhere," Ruggles said.
"It made the trip much longer more arduous, in many ways."
He recalled some humorous moments, including when one sailor lost his false teeth overboard while shouting an obscenity at his crewmates.
While the time it took Wayfarer to get to Hobart raises eyebrows, she accomplished something many faster yachts failed to do over the next 68 years - finish.
"Apart from relief and joy of having done what we intended to do, you can wrap it up in the saying 'mission accomplished'," Ruggles said.
"Some of the crew backed up the following year and we halved the time.
"We've still got that record and nobody can take it off us anymore.
"They want to do it in one day."
He admits to a mixture of emotions about the technology that could make such a quick passage a possibility in future years.
"The fastest we ever went was eight or nine knots," Ruggles said.
"They are doing 25 or 30 knots in these boats, Wild Oats and others, at certain times and certain conditions.
"They are almost flying. Nowadays they've changed the technology so much, you can say they do fly."
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