Audi Sydney Gold Coast Line honours - Wild Oats X

by Lisa Ratcliff on 30 Jul 2007 At 11.02pm last night, in a six knot sou’wester and with its huge Code 0 spinnaker up, Bob Oatley’s Wild Oats X took line honours in the Audi Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race.

After leading the fleet out of Sydney Harbour on Saturday afternoon, overnight Wild Oats X gave up her lead to Ichi Ban and then Wild Joe but managed to claw them both back and finish with a little breathing space.

It was a champion effort by a crew of champions. Many of Australia’s best were on board Wild Oats X including the country’s most coveted navigator, Adrienne Cahalan, who has navigated Bob Oatley’s upsized Wild Oats XI to back to back line honours wins in the last two Rolex Sydney Hobart races. Chris Links, Barney Walker, Steve ‘Mothy’ Jarvin, Sven Runow, Tim Wiseman and of course skipper Mark Richards were also amongst the star studded crew of 16 which sailed the boat to its second line honours win having also beaten the fleet in 2005.

For Richards it was two line honours wins from two attempts and he was delighted with the result but also took the time to praise the efforts of Wild Joe.

'Wild Joe did a fantastic job. We had a great tussle with them in this afternoon’s light air. They only had 11 on board, which made a big difference, but our boys managed to keep the boat between them and the finish line'.

Richards sighted plenty of wildlife during the trip north including whales, dolphins and even a couple of flying fish that landed in the cockpit.

Cahalan thought the pre-race forecast was pretty good. 'It was up to us to get the balance right between inshore and offshore,' she said tonight.

'This morning we started concentrating too much on where Ichi Ban was while Wild Joe was making gains in the transition between breezes.

'Wild Joe is faster when it’s light plus they had the advantage of being able to see what was happening up ahead, but we managed to break away from them at Point Danger,' Cahalan added.

Wild Oats X’s elapsed time was 1 day 10 hours 2 minutes 45 seconds for the 384 nautical mile race which began at 1pm from Sydney Harbour on Saturday afternoon.

Steven David, owner of the Reichel/Pugh 60 Wild Joe, wasn’t aboard for this race after stepping off his boat at the last minute, but he was on the finish line to congratulate his weary crew. Wild Joe recorded a finish time of 11.22pm giving them an elapsed time of 1 day 10 hours 22 minutes 44 seconds.

Wild Joe’s skipper Adam Beashel and tactician David Dickson put up a valiant fight, plotting a course which took the 60-footer well offshore and put them at the front of the pack at lunchtime today. But in the end they couldn’t hold out the larger Reichel/Pugh, which happens to be Bob Oatley’s former boat.

'We had a great battle playing the shifts with Wild Oats,' said Beashel, who has been sailing aboard Emirates Team New Zealand recently. 'They found a couple of shifts this afternoon and from there it was a case of the rich getting richer. We had one final shot at them and thought we might be able to slip through but it wasn’t to be. They sailed a good defensive race to the finish.'

The crew of Wild Joe now has their sights on the handicap prize. Currently second on provisional results to Stephen Ellis’s Farr 40 Splash Gordon, they are hoping the breeze lightens overnight which will slow the progress of those in the hunt for the handicap silverware. Wild Oats is also currently well placed on provisional handicap results.

Rather than waiting until daybreak, both Wild Oats X and Wild Joe decided to take a chance and shoot across the sand bar into the Gold Coast seaway on the outgoing tide. Wild Oats X, with their keel canted and three crewmen up the mast to lean the boat right over, made it down the channel and they and Wild Joe are now berthed at Southport Yacht Club which is eerily quiet before the full brunt of the large fleet is felt tomorrow and into the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The PHS fleet has a new leader tonight. ACT entry Namadgi, skippered by Rick Scott Murphy, has obviously capitalised on the weather knowledge of champion balloonist Sean Kavanagh and his father Phil and is out in front with Stampede still in second and new entry into the top three, Phillip’s Foote Witchdoctor in third.

The next boat due to finish is Matt Allen’s Ichi Ban with an ETA of 2am tomorrow morning. (she actually finished at 1:37am)