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  • Day 3 Update: Tension mounts as race reaches climax

Day 3 Update: Tension mounts as race reaches climax

Day 3 Update: Tension mounts as race reaches climax
SMUGGLER, Bow: 32, Sail n: 421, Owner: Sebastian Bohm, State/Nation: NSW, Design: Rogers 46 Protected by Copyright

Day 3 Update: Tension mounts as race reaches climax

As the leader board for overall victory in the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race firmed, dockside at the finish is rapidly filling with arriving yachts - and with that a mounting exchange of colourful tales at sea.

At 1pm Saturday and after three days of racing, the Phillip Turner owned Reichel-Pugh 66, Alive, still held first place in the standings in the fight for the Tattersall Cup with Wild Oats X and Voodoo positioned in second and third places overall, followed by Winning Appliances and Ichi Ban, last year’s winner which finished at 11.30pm on Friday after sitting within swimming distance of the finish line - becalmed.

All those crews had finished. The nearest challenger yet to finish is Ausreo, the NSW entry owned by Ian Creak that had 73.4nm to go and a deadline of 2.48pm to have any chance of usurping Alive’s first place position. But at 1pm as she sailed at 3.9knots, that hope appeared out of reach with her estimated finish of 3.13am Sunday

Meanwhile, the fate of super-maxi, Wild Oats XI, which claimed line honours at 8.07am on Friday still awaits the outcome of a protest lodged against it by the Race Committee for a possible breach of Special Regulation 4.09 (a) in rule 11.4 that states an ‘AIS Transponder shall be carried and be switched on and that it is receiving and transmitting.’ The protest was to be heard at 1300hrs at the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania.

Both scenarios over the previous 24 hours reflect how uncertainty – on and off the water - is so much a part of the Sydney Hobart Race.

From a race point of view, despite the shift in wind strengths and directions, one constant in accounts from crews on boats at the front of the fleet or those in the middle and back was that most had been challenged by the weather transitions which left a number of crews of all sizes and classes frustratingly parked at some point in the race.

By 1pm, 27 yachts in the fleet numbered 79 after the retirement of Tasmanian 2 Unlimited on Friday afternoon when she collided with a sunfish and broke her rudder.  However, for those boats which finished early on Saturday and the remainder still sailing, the last hours of day three pitted them against far different conditions than what the bigger boated front runners and contenders for line honours finished in.

Dawn rose over Hobart with the Derwent River swept by blustery 30-35knot winds that blew from the west and afterward north-west with gusts reported up to 50 knots.

This was a stark contrast to the 10-15 knot southerlies that the super-maxis were welcomed by on Friday morning. Even more stark were the near-still conditions that other smaller boats faced on late Friday afternoon and evening when conditions locked down, ending the hopes of a number of a number of aspiring handicap winners.

Conditions outside the Derwent River was also far different as Carl Crafoord, co-owner and navigator of the Cookson 12, Sail Exchange, reported at 0635 this morning: “We’ve had a fair bit of breeze – 30-32 knots out of the west – then it went round to the north-west.

“We’ve been fully pressed sailing with two and three reefs in the main. We followed the forecast and I’m disappointed as there was more than forecast and we lost time on Grace O’Malley and Enterprise. We got to Tasman Island and got a southerly off St Helens – and then we ended up becalmed there for 35 minutes or so.

“We’re now reaching under spinnaker off Maria Island.”

By Rupert Guinness, RSHYR Media