Wild Oats takes Line Honours for third time in Sydney Hobart

28 December, 2007 9:45:00 AM AEDT

Racetime 01:20:45:00

The Sydney maxi Wild Oats XI, skippered by Mark Richards, has made yachting history this morning, crossing the finish line of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race at 10:24am to secure her third consecutive line honours victory. Richards has been at the helm each time.
Wild Oats XI is the first yacht to achieve this feat since Claude Plowman’s Morna made it three in a row between 1946 and 1948, today’s result confirming her place as one of the most successful yachts in the history of the Rolex Sydney Hobart, with three consecutive line honours, an overall win and the race record. Her elapsed time for the race was one day 21 hours 24 minutes 32 seconds, the third fastest time for the 628 nautical mile course.

“We came here to do a job and that was to claim the treble,” said a jubilant Richards soon after crossing the finish line this morning in a nor'west breeze which fluctuated from 10 to 25 knots just in the Derwent. “We were challenged, we were chased and we were constantly looking over our shoulders but we are here now and it’s time to celebrate.

“Back next year for a fourth? You never know, you’ll have to talk to Bob,” Richards added. Bob Oatley’s 30m maxi Wild Oats XI was the pre-race favourite and has dominated since the opening minutes of Australia’s premier yacht race which began from Sydney Harbour at 1pm on 26 December. She led the fleet out of the Harbour and never looked back. In the opening 10 hours of the race she surged down the New South Wales coast reaching speeds of 22 knots in almost perfect conditions, but light southwesterly winds in Bass Strait yesterday quashed hopes of bettering her own record set two years ago.

Northerly winds overnight allowed her to make up a lot of time as she sped down the Tasmanian coast, reviving faint hopes of a new record, but it was always going to be a big ask.
Wild Oats XI crossed the finish line ahead of the British maxi City Index Leopard, skippered by Mike Slade. Slade staged a dramatic comeback over the course of the morning. At one stage the two frontrunners were 21 nautical miles apart and by the time the crew of Wild Oats heard the sound of cannon fire, thanks to members of the Militaria Association of Tasmania who dress in period costume to fire the cannon historic Battery Point, City Index Leopard was in the Derwent River and only four miles short of glory.

The result is an extraordinary achievement for Mark Richards who assembled a line up of international yachtsmen with an extraordinary 233 Rolex Sydney Hobarts between them to mount the historic challenge. In September Wild Oats XI was dismasted during the Rolex Maxi Yacht Cup in Sardinia and it has been a massive job getting a new mast and sails in time for the race, the boat only re-launched in the first week of December.

Currently in third place is Matt Allen’s modified Volvo 70 Ichi Ban which this morning bore down on Grant Wharington’s Melbourne maxi Skandia which is limping to Hobart under jury rig after snapping the top of its mast at 2.30am this morning. Skandia is currently third but set to overtake is Roger Sturgeon’s Rosebud.

Morna, which sealed her third consecutive win in 1948 with an elapsed time of 4 days 5 hours and 1 minute, was a Fife design, a 65 foot Bermudan cutter which took line honours three times as Morna and went on to finish first over the line a further four times as Kurrewa IV. Morna was built in Sydney for the then Commodore the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron, Dr Alexander MacCormick, and was owned by a number of prominent Sydney yachtsmen including the late Sir Frank Packer.

Reproduced courtesy Rolex Sydney Hobart official website.

Photo reproduced courtesy Rolex/Daniel Forster

You can read more about sailing on the website www.sailboat@adventure.com

Captain Cook and Point Venus, Matavai Bay,Tahiti

Extract from the ebook 'Voyage of the little Ship 'Tere Moana'


Our little ship reminds them that if they are to make Point Venus today, then they need to set
off now. Extricating the anchor from the mud, the hose and scrubber come into use, removing with some vigorous pokes and vigorous strokes, the thick grey goo from the flukes. Snubbed home with the anchor washed down, she turns into the gentle breeze and sails out of harbour on a reciprocal course from her entry just a few days before. A short sail eastward along the breakwater brings her into Matavai Bay proper where she drops anchor in about eight metres of water, into black sand. These are the same black sands that the anchors of Cooks’ ‘Endeavour’
would have embedded themselves in in 1769.

Following in the anchor prints of our most famous explorer did not go unnoticed by her crew. They chatter on about what it must have been like back then and if there may be any charming south sea maidens, bedecked with leis to welcome them as they step ashore. Whether it is because they have not arrived in a three master and given the traditional full navy salute, or they are not dressed in their grand uniforms, their arrival on the strand is marked only by the attention of a small band of screeching gulls, whirling over their heads. Other than this mild irritation, the beach is pretty much empty, a black curving band stretching away equally either side of them. For maximum effect they have landed dead centre, so are a little surprised at the absence of gleaming brown bodies dashing down the beach, ecstatic at their arrival! Several disdainful hurrumphs and grunts are exchanged as they labour the dinghy up the sandy incline, but these dissipate rapidly on the realisation that directly in front of them, edging the shoreline, is a small seaside café serving cool drinks and beer.

‘Huh, Cook didn’t have one of these waiting for him when he landed!’ offers Anglo crew - dignity is preserved.

Swinging gently on her chain, our little ship chuckles affectionately at the false vanities of these folks called humans.

Lazy late afternoon sun slips clammily down their backs as they head further eastward toward the point where they expect to see the treasures of the Transit observation. A couple of cold beers washing around in their system seems to infect the male crew members’ legs with a jelly like effect, reducing their ability to place one foot steadily in front of the other without meandering. Sibling crew, striding ahead, sniffs that they would have been better sticking to carbonated water as she had done! The cackling response from behind only serves to increase sibling crews’ tempo, leaving them even further adrift. The small clump of battered and paint flaked stores huddled at the juncture in the road pass slowly by to the right as they make their way out to the end of the promontory – windswept and barren. A few straggly bushes, struggling in their attempt to retain a foothold, dot the bleached white coral. Surprisingly, the rather impressive Point Venus lighthouse constructed in eighteen sixty eight at the knolly point is surrounded by a bunch of palms and casuarinas. It is here that our fearless crew become conscious, belatedly, that they must have passed the ‘Museum of Discovery’ on the way in. Looking around, that apart from the lighthouse, there are no other buildings in the area looking anything like a museum. For such a monumental event our crew were expecting, if not an edifice likened to the Palace de Versaille, some respectable construction recognising the stature of what took place on this spot two hundred and fifty years earlier. On enquiring from a local it is established that the museum was a very little more than a humble stone hut. It was demolished recently with the contents removed to Paris, where they are now on display, location unknown.


They now understood how the characters in the Da Vinci Code felt when coming up against a blank wall when unravelling a mystery. However, in the case of our crew they neither had the resources nor the inclination to board the next flight to Paris to continue their search. Admiring the stone and intricate brick work of the lighthouse once again, our crew turn away, ambling into the advancing dusk.

Extract from the ebook ‘Voyage of the Little Ship ‘Tere Moana’. You can read this on my website www.sailboat2adventure.com

Sydney Hobart Race start - Boxing Day Dec. 24th. 2007

Wild Oats XI leading the pack
December 26, 2007 - 4:31PM

Wild Oats XI is maintaining its place at the front of the Sydney to Hobart yacht fleet.
The New South Wales maxi is leading from British boat City Index Leopard, with Victoria's Skandia in third place.

The fleet of 82 is tipped to enjoy freshening north-easterly breezes through the afternoon and into the evening before a forecast southerly change in the early hours of tomorrow morning. Earlier. hat-trick chasing Wild Oats XI struck the first major blow of the race by beating its rivals through Sydney Heads.

Bidding to become only the second boat in the history of the event after Morna (1946-47-48) to take line honours three successive times, the maxi made a blistering start. The boat went through the Heads first ahead of the other two maxis, City Index Leopard and Skandia, the 2003 line honours winner.

The gaggle of boats behind the maxis included American yacht Rosebud and a quartet of local NSW representatives, Wot Yot, Yendys, Toyota Aurion V6 and Ragamuffin. The fleet started the 628 nautical mile race under east to north easterly breezes of five to 10 knots.

One boat, DHL-The Daily Telegraph, was forced to turn back after breaking the start. However, it made good progress and clawed its way back up the fleet following its early setback. City Index Leopard was the leading boat among the eight overseas entries six of which were from the United Kingdom, with one each from Mexico and the United States. As usual a large fleet of spectator craft was on hand for the start of the race.

Eighty-year-old Michael York, the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia's longest serving member, fired the starting cannon for the race.

Reproduced courtesy the Sydney Morning Herald.

Photo credit Craig Golding

You can read more about a yacht race in 'Port of Refuge' Vava'u, Tonga in the ebook 'Voyage of the Little Ship 'TereMoana' on my website http://www.sailboat2adventure.com/

Downwind run all the way forecast for Sydney Hobart

THE skipper and owner of British super-maxi City Index Leopard, Mike Slade, says this year's Sydney to Hobart yacht race will be his boat's only shot at the race honours. Slade said the cost of mounting a Hobart campaign - upwards of £300,000 ($700,000) - and the desire to quickly establish the pedigree of his new 45-tonne boat, which has already won the prestigious Fastnet race in record time, meant that this year's race fell in the "slot of time when it is the yacht to beat".

"I want it [Hobart victory] badly, it cost a lot of money, a lot of effort and a lot of time," Slade said.

But the weather forecast is conspiring against Slade and his heavier boat, and strongly favouring the lighter super-maxi rivals, two-time winner Wild Oats XI, Skandia and the reconfigured Volvo 70 boat, Ichi Ban. Slade said the long range forecast of north-easterly winds of between 20 and 30 knots would mean all four boats would break the race record of one day, 18 hours, 40 minutes and 10 seconds set by Wild Oats XI in 2005. In those spinnaker-flying conditions, his boat would lag.

"It is horrible," he said of the forecast, which will be updated on Friday morning.

"We should buy an ice-cream and forget the whole thing. What we want is a sou'-easterly in more than 12 knots the whole way there, and I am sure that at some stage we will get them."

Wild Oats XI skipper Mark Richards(with line honours trophy above) said the forecast was "too good to be true", so much so his boat could even figure in overall handicap contention despite its very high handicap rating.

"We have got some big furling, reaching headsails, and a mainsail of 900 square metres so we could still be in there on handicap if the winds are right, but if it is upwind like last year, we will have no hope in hell," Richards said.

Slade said a Wild Oats XI victory would be exceptional because the Bob Oatley-owned boat would have beaten the newer and latest design boats. He said the advancements in technology were so rapid a boat usually only had an 18-month window before a newer, faster boat was launched.

"It is unusual for one boat to dominate repeatedly at this level, and to win three times is pretty exceptional - the reason is new boats are designed and the technology moves on," Slade said.

"Wild Oats XI is a narrower boat but now, after the Volvo 70's the [latest] design is wider, with a chine [more of a square shape] and the deeper canting keels. Already in New Zealand there is a boat being built that will probably be quicker than us."

Wild Oats XI is at $1.55 for line honours with Leopard at $3 with TAB Sportsbet. But Slade said he got $8 on Leopard back in England and forecast the odds for his boat would shorten further if the weather forecast changed.

Reproduced courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald

Read more about downwind sailing in my ebook 'Voyage of the Little Ship 'Tere Moana' on my website www.sailboat2adventure.com