Race record goes south
Wild Oats XI makes history in Sydney to Hobart line honours win
AFTER 628 nautical miles of close combat, a near- miss and cat- and- mouse tactics Wild Oats X1 last night pulled off one of the great comebacks of Australian sport this year to beat rival supermaxi LDV Comanche for a record- breaking line honours win in the 73rd Sydney to Hobart.
Wild Oats finished in a time of one day, nine hours, 10 minutes and 42 seconds, ahead of Comanche in one day, nine hours, and 34 seconds.
It was third time lucky for the nine- time champion, sent to the blood bin in 2015 and 2016 with gear and sail damage and whose campaign could have been derailed again this year by two damaged sails.
But Mark Richards and his team must wait to see if Comanche goes ahead with a protest over a close call at sea — and any punishment that could follow if found guilty — 11 minutes before having their victory officially ratified.
The win is the first by the 12- year- old yacht since the death of her owner Bob Oatley, sailing lover and patriarch of a family with business in tourism and wine, who died in January 2016, aged 87.
Aboard, said Richards, was Oatley’s walking stick — affectionately called the voodoo stick by the crew — and carried for good luck.
And it bought them plenty with Wild Oats trailing LDV Comanche for 24 hours before finally overtaking her rival with just five miles of the course to sail.
The race came down to the final 11 nautical miles on the Derwent River in a cliffhanger for the race annals which saw Perpetual Loyal’s 2016 time of just more than one day and 13 hours smashed.
Thousands of spectators flocked to the foreshore of the river to watch the engrossing duel played out in twilight be- fore her eventual shortly after 10pm.
In an extraordinary final stanza of the race, LDV Comanche was clocked at 30 knots as she powered across Storm Bay with the win and race record in sight.
But then disaster struck with Jim Cooney’s yacht grinding to a halt in a windless parking lot about 12 miles from the finish line.
Behind her, Wild Oats made up ground to come within about 500m of her rival to triumph set up the finish straight thriller. Wild Oats finally clawed her way alongside Comanche at 8.26pm but could not overtake. About eight minutes later the world 24- hour record- breaker LDV Comanche’s fate was sealed when Wild Oats X1 wafted by.
Both crews had teams standing almost 30 metres in the air on the top spreader windwatching as they searched for any advantage. But in the end it was game, set match – and new race record – to Wild Oats X1.