Wild Oats wins Sydney-Hobart
2005-12-28 12:06
Sydney - The Australian supermaxi Wild Oats won the 61st Sydney to Hobart yacht race in record time on Wednesday, despite breaking its mainsail in the final stretch.
Wild Oats shaved more than an hour off the previous record set by Nokia in 1999 when it entered Hobart's Constitution Dock.
The 30m yacht, only launched earlier this month, completed the bluewater classic about an hour and 16 minutes ahead of nearest rival Alfa Romeo of New Zealand.
The victory puts Wild Oats in the running for a handicap win, potentially making it the first yacht since the inaugural race in 1945 to take out the treble of line honours, race record and handicap win.
Third across the line was the Australian supermaxi Skandia, skippered by Grant Wharrington. Fourth was another supermaxi, Konica Minolta, skippered by New Zealander Stewart Thwaites.
Accompanied to the finish line by a large flotilla of spectator craft, Wild Oats finished the 628-nautical mile race in one day, 18 hours, 40 minutes and 10 seconds to beat Nokia's record by one hour, seven minutes and 52 seconds.
Record win
Lighter than expected winds kept the yacht off record time in the early stages of the race, which began in Sydney on Monday, but skipper Mark Richards said tactical decisions were crucial in the first night.
"The race for line honours was decided on the first night at sea," he said, calling it a fantastic win.
"We knew this was a downhill race and that we'd be very, very hard to beat," he said.
Richards said the race was largely plain sailing except when the mainsail blew out entering the Derwent River about five nautical miles from the finish.
"The toughest part of the bloody race was the last," he told reporters.
"We thought it was just too easy going the whole way here and something had to go wrong and it did.
"It doesn't matter. We still finished and broke the record."
Wild Oats led the fleet out of Sydney Harbour on Boxing Day but was briefly overtaken by Alfa Romeo before regaining the lead.
Richards put the victory down to his team's tactic of hugging the coast, while Alfa Romeo went offshore in search of stronger winds.
"A great game plan -- we stuck to it and it worked," he said.
Alfa Romeo's skipper Neville Crichton admitted that the decision to look for wind offshore cost him dearly.
"They (Wild Oats) did a good job and I think carried all the fresh breeze with them and we were playing catch-up all the way," he said.
The 85-strong fleet had only one withdrawal, the German entry Conergy, in contrast to last year, when almost half the comptitors retired in rough conditions, and to 1998, when six sailors drowned in mountainous seas.