Wild Oats leads fleet home at Hamilton Island

by Rob Kothe on 25 Aug 2007 Bob Oatley's Wild Oats is set to clean sweep line honours at Audi Hamilton Island Race Week. She was 350 metres ahead of Steven David's Wild Joe as they short tacked down the eastern side of North Molle Island.

They were 400 metres ahead of Geoff Ross' Yendys around the top of North Molle heading for the finish line.

Yendys was ahead of the Davidson 60 Your Hired with Ray Robert's Quantum Racing next.

Karl Kwok's Reichel Pugh 45 Beau Geste was next and was probably leading on handicap from Quantum. Next on the water was Bob Steel's TP52 Quest follow by Graham Wood's TP52 Wot Yot followed by Alan Briety's Corby 49 Limit.

It will be a close run thing in the battle for IRC overall with Geoff Ross' Yendys almost exactly on the handicap pace with Wild Oats, however with 11 feet more in waterline length, the Oats X may have an advantage as the boats push the tide home.

The key to this race as always is which tactician will be the cleverest at crossing the north rushing tidal flow. The tide turned three hours ago. Some boats might be tempted to head straight across the Cumberland Passage while most of the leaders have hugged the Molle shores looking for back eddies and then aim for the bottom of Cid Island or the tip of Henning Island depending where they leave the Molles and cross the river.

For the record... last year Grant Wharington's 30m super maxi Skandia sailed the 23 nautical mile Molle-Daydream Island course in two hours, seven minutes and 20 seconds, slashing more than 12 minutes off the 1998 record set by George Snow’s Brindabella. While the breeze has lifted back in Dent Passage, its now blowing at 15 knots, the record looks safe this year.

As the clock has now ticked past the record elapsed time, the leading two boats are now on the shoreline north of Henning Island.

The bullk of the IRC fleet is in mid crossing from about half way down South Molle across to Cid Island. There is a pod of four or five hump backs in the passage eyeballing the fleet as they pass by.