Wild Oats XI nears the home stretch in Rolex Sydney Hobart

The crew of Bob Oatley’s record holding supermaxi Wild Oats XI has seen conditions go from one extreme to the other in the past 24 hours in the Rolex Sydney Hobart race.

Late today the 30-metre long supermaxi, which is being skippered by Mark Richards, was tightening her claim on a fifth line honours in six starts in the classic.

She was sailing at 20 knots on a direct course to Tasman Island, at the entrance to Storm Bay, and shaping up for a finish in Hobart at between 10pm and midnight.

‘It doesn’t get much better than this,’ said the yacht’s co-navigator Ian ‘Fresh’ Burns this evening. ‘It’s perfect sailing out here.’

One of the yacht’s kiwi crew, Robbie ‘Battler’ Naismith, spoke up in support: ‘If there was a time when you wanted to love everything about sailing then you could do no better than be here right now.’

At the time Wild Oats XI was sailing towards Tasman Island in a 12-knot north westerly wind. She had a large reaching headsail and full mainsail set while maintaining a 25 nautical mile lead over second placed Investec Loyal, a similar sized supermaxi.

Just 24 hours earlier Wild Oats XI was being pummelled by a southerly gale and five metre seas in Bass Strait. For that entire day the crew had struggled to slow the yacht so that it didn’t suffer structural or rig damage. They also wanted to prevent crew being injured in the violent conditions.

‘This afternoon we are starting to see the benefit from our pre-race strategy,’ said Burns. ‘Our plan was to get ourselves to the front of the fleet then cover our nearest challengers all the way to Hobart. We also knew we needed to nurse the boat across Bass Strait so we didn’t damage the yacht or have injured crew. As we approached the north-east corner of Tasmania early today we opted to hold a course offshore so we could stay in a better breeze and at the same time cover Investec Loyal. We’ve done just that and it’s worked. Interestingly, Wild Thing, which was about the same distance behind as Loyal this morning, elected to stay closer to the coast is now more than 90 miles back.’

While things were looking good for Wild Oats XI in the race for being first into Hobart Burns was keen to remind everyone ‘this is a Hobart race’, meaning that previous experiences in the 66 year history of the race showed that the race wasn’t won until the finish gun sounded. Tricky conditions might lie ahead.

After rounding Tasman Island Wild Oats XI had a 30 nautical mile reach across Storm Bay to the entrance of the Derwent River, then an 11nm stretch to the finish line off the city waterfront.

Race enthusiasts can go to the official event website for a real time tracker of yachts and their position.