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A calculated gamble paid off big time for Henri Lloyd, as she consolidated her lead in the Clipper Round the World Yacht event, by winning the latest race from Albany, Western Australia to Sydney.
Her crew, containing sailors from at least six nations, celebrated after completing the fifth race of the 40,000 nautical mile event early on Friday morning.
All 12 competing boats will contest the Sydney to Hobart starting on Boxing Day.
By late afternoon on Friday, four more boats had finished – One DLL, Qingdao, Switzerland and Derry-Londonderry-Doire.
The rest of the fleet are expected to cross the Rushcutters Bay finish line by early Sunday morning.
The Clipper race features one-design 70-foot boats crewed by amateur sailors and a professional skipper.
It was Henri Lloyd’s skipper, Eric Holden – the weather forecaster for the Canadian sailing team at the 2012 Olympics – who came up with the key tactic of the 2150 nautical mile leg that gave their boat a decisive break.
“We did go offshore, everyone else stayed inshore and we came out first,” Henri Lloyd’s watch leader Nick Golding told AAP.
“You don’t know whether it’s going to pay off early. You have to go through with it and you have to follow it all the way through and then we recognised we got about a 10-mile lead on the boats around us and pushed as hard as we could.”
It is the first win for the boat, but her fourth successive podium finish.
“As a team, we knew this was the level that we wanted to play at. First (position) was just a matter of things falling into place,” Golding said.
“We’ve had a few seconds. We knew it was coming; we just didn’t know when.”
He said the Clipper boats would relish tough weather conditions in the Sydney to Hobart.
“These boats will do really well in big weather and it will be really nice to show all the pros and the semi-pros what the amateurs can do when they get a good boat,” Golding said.