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A rare Christmas Day hitout has Wild Oats XI ready to make a full scale charge for a record eighth Sydney to Hobart line honours title.
Bob Oatley’s supermaxi lost four days of valuable training time in the leadup to the 70th edition of the race after suffering damage to her boom last weekend.
After staff worked around the clock to do repairs, the boat was back on Sydney Harbour for close to three hours on Christmas morning, with team members happy with the results.
Skipper Mark Richards is reluctant to talk about the outright record, which it shares with Morna/Kurrewa IV, until it becomes fact. He believes the race will hinge on how the five supermaxis in the 117-boat fleet perform in their worst conditions.
Pre-race forecasts have tended not to favour a specific boat, with all five likely to get periods in which they will prosper and others when they could falter.
“Everyone is going to have a turn of their perfect conditions for their boats,” Richards told AAP.
“It’s going to be who manages their worst conditions the best, I think.”
Oatley’s boat faces potentially the biggest spread of serious challengers since her launch in 2005.
Foremost among them is recently-launched wide-bodied American supermaxi Comanche, which was only launched two months ago.
“A boat like this you would love six months (to prepare),” Comanche’s American skipper Ken Read told AAP.
“We’ve got about 19 or 20 days of sailing on this boat, total. But 19 or 20 days with an incredibly talented bunch of people.”
One question over Comanche was answered on Thursday, when co-owner Kristy Hinze-Clark decided not to do the race.
The Australian model considered the potential heavy weather conditions forecast for the first evening and duties to her two young children, in making the decision.
Like Comanche, Syd Fischer’s renovated supermaxi Ragamuffin 100 is untested in ocean racing conditions, though the octogenarian yachtsman says his boat is pretty slippery through the water.
Anthony Bell, one of only two owners to have beaten Wild Oats XI for line honours in the race, is hoping his celebrity-studded Perpetual LOYAL can replicate his success of 2011 on Investec LOYAL, which stayed close enough to Oatley’s boat before decisively moving to the front.
Manouch Moshayedi, owner of the fifth supermaxi, RIO 100, is hoping his lighter yacht will catch the heavier supermaxis, if they have to slow down heading into the strong southerlies forecast for Saturday night.
Unless there’s a sudden dramatic change in the forecast, a race record looks out of reach.
If the forecast doesn’t change much, the small to medium-sized boats around the 50-foot mark look likely to be strong handicap contenders.
That would include last year’s overall winner, Victoire, though owner Darryl Hodgkinson doesn’t fancy his Cookson 50 boat’s prospects of being the first yacht in 50 years to go back-to-back.
Other boats in tha 40-to-52 foot range who could do well on corrected time include Balance, Wild Rose, OneSails Racing, Patrice, St George Midnight Rambler and ADA Celestial.
The milestone race will be marked by a Parade of Sail prior to the start, that will feature a fleet of up to 40 boats as part of a tribute to the evolution of the race.
The 70th edition will also have a special Corinthian section of competition for full amateur crews, that constitute close to a third of the fleet.
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