Wild Oats XI has set a new course record on the way to winning line honours in the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, maintaining her lead over Alfa Romeo despite a fight back from New Zealand team after a tactical error put them into second place. Helmsman Mark Richards raised his fist aloft in victory as he helmed the Reichel/Pugh 98-foot maxi across the Hobart finish line to the chime of 8 o'clock this morning, setting a new time for the 628-mile race of 1 day, 18 hours and 10 minutes.

Despite bettering Nokia's longstanding record by more than an hour, it was by no means plain sailing, as Wild Oats sailed across the line under jib alone, the mainsail having been badly damaged in the final hour's sailing up a windswept Derwent River. The running backstay got caught on the top batten of the mainsail during a tack, and eventually the batten wrenched away, forcing the crew to lower the sail before it tore apart with the flogging from the wind. Not that it seemed to hold up the lightweight canting-keel boat too badly. Even under jib alone she was making over 12 knots boatspeed upwind.

"Huge, huge relief," was Richards' breathless reaction to winning line honours. "We sailed a pretty flawless race. The fact that we had problems in the last 10 miles is a shame, but that's ocean racing." Not that the rest of the race was incident-free. "We had three direct hits with sunfish. It wasn't pretty. There was blood everywhere behind the boat after one collision. We hit a shark too, and Gary Wiseman was nearly thrown off the wheel."

The strong winds of the previous night also took their toll. At one point, while charging downwind in 34 knots of breeze and travelling almost as fast through the water, Wild Oats' boom vang shattered. "That was pretty scary," admitted Richards, with some understatement. But heartstopping moments like that made victory all the sweeter. "It's an absolute thrill, an honour, and a dream come true," he said. For his efforts, Richards was presented with a Rolex Yachtmaster timepiece in Rolesium by Matteo Mazzanti of Rolex SA.

Owner Bob Oatley, who didn't sail with the boat but was there to greet the team when they arrived to the applause of Hobart spectators, has spent a long time trying to win this race. He couldn't take his eyes off the JJ Illingworth Trophy, the plaque detailing many of the great names of ocean racing. "A lot of these names on here are my friends," he said. Just as last year when the newly-launched Nicorette won a hard battle to Hobart, Wild Oats XI was launched less than a month ago and it was a hard scramble to be ready for the Rolex Sydney Hobart.
 

Alfa Romeo, on the other hand, had a four-month head start and Neville Crichton's timing for this race appeared to have been perfect. But if Wild Oats was late to the water, she was still a well-prepared campaign. This is Oatley's third canting-keel boat, so he is well used to the technology. "We had confidence that we would finish the boat on time," said Oatley. "It was delivered exactly on the date it was due. We didn't expect as many adjustments to be made after launch, and we didn't have as much time on the water as we'd have liked, but we're here. We did just five short races [in the lead-up to the Rolex Sydney Hobart], and that gave us a lot of the confidence in the boat."

The indications from the short inshore races at the Rolex Trophy in Sydney two weeks ago were that Alfa Romeo had the edge upwind, and that Wild Oats might be slightly quicker downwind. As Alfa's tactician, Michael Coxon pointed out: "Unfortunately for us, this was a downwind race. But that's not to say they're lucky. Wild Oats sailed very well." The key moment in the race came on the first night out of Sydney when Wild Oats, lying in second place behind Alfa Romeo, held inshore looking for a favourable wind shift. Alfa Romeo continued on a more seaward course and never found the same breeze as Wild Oats. "We always thought this race would be won on the first night," said Richards. "We had a game plan and it worked for us."

Alfa Romeo reached Hobart just over an hour behind Wild Oats, and Neville Crichton couldn't disguise his anguish at missing line honours. "They outsmarted us," he admitted dockside. "We gave it our best shot. We always like to win, but at the end of the day we got beaten by another boat and we'll just have to rethink it. We've beaten them in six out of seven races so far, they've beaten us one. But this was the important one. They seem a little bit faster than us downwind, but we made a bad calculation on the weather. They went inshore at Green Point and we went offshore, and that cost us the race."

With this year's event bringing Neville Crichton's Sydney to Hobart to six events with one win, the obvious question is, will he do a seventh one? "Absolutely not," said Crichton as he sat on the edge of Alfa Romeo in Hobart. "But I have said that five times before and here I am again! And, in any case, I now have unfinished business with this race, so who can say where I will be on Boxing Day come next year..."