Damaged Comanche leads storm-hit race
Wild weather knocks out 20% of field
AMERICAN super-yacht Comanche retook the lead from fellow US challenger Rambler in the Sydney to Hobart yesterday, as more damaged boats retired from the gruelling race off Australia’s east coast, officials said.
Strong winds knocked out just over 20% of the field on Saturday and yesterday – including defending champion and eighttime line honours winner Wild Oats XI – whittling the 108-strong fleet that set sail from Sydney Harbour on Boxing Day down to 85.
The retirement of Wild Oats XI – which holds the race record of one day, 18 hours, 23 minutes and 12 seconds, set in 2012 – left the race in the hands of US challengers Comanche and Rambler 88, with just two nautical miles separating the pair.
Comanche, owned by Netscape founder Jim Clark and wife Kristy Hinze, and one of the four 100-foot supermaxis that entered the 628 nautical-mile (1 163km) bluewater classic, led the race for line honours after bolting out of Sydney Harbour.
But the crew had to work hard to repair a damaged daggerboard and rudder before entering the Bass Strait chasing Rambler yesterday morning and resuming the lead, organisers the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia (CYCA) said.
Rambler also suffered damage, to its starboard daggerboard, and warned it was a “serious structural problem impeding our boat speed”.
“We have no idea what we hit, we couldn’t see it,” Rambler’s Australian navigator Andrew Cape said.
“It might have been marine life or flotsam, but it was a solid hit. It shook the boat. Our port tack performance has been badly affected, and it is all upwind to Tasman Island, so we have a lot of pain to come.”
Chasing the two yachts are Australia’s Ragamuffin 100 and Italy’s Maserati.
“We decided to punch on through. We think we can get to Hobart safely,” Comanche’s American skipper Ken Read said.
“I don’t care if we limp over the line. We are going to finish this damned race.”
It is just the second Sydney to Hobart for Comanche, which set a new 24-hour monohull record of 618.01 nautical miles in July, months after finishing runner-up in line honours at last year’s contest.
Despite Comanche’s lead, organisers said milder conditions could favour Rambler later yesterday.
“On paper, the much lighter conditions expected in the bottom half of Bass Strait and along the Tasmanian coast later this afternoon and tonight favour the less beamy Rambler,” the CYCA said.
Both American boats had battled strong southerly winds that hit the race, where sailors faced 25-30 knot winds and big gusts against a south-flowing current.
Wild Oats XI captain Mark Richards said the conditions were “tricky”.
“Forty knots of breeze, very dark at night,” Richards said as his supermaxi returned to Sydney yesterday morning.
“A few things went wrong, when that happens, snowball effect . . . . We lost the main engine of the boat,” he said, adding that the yacht’s mainsail was “trashed”.
Other retirements included line honours contender supermaxi Perpetual Loyal and Chinese entry Ark323.
The first boats are not expected to cross the finish line until today. — AFP