Wild Oats takes line honours

by Lisa Ratcliff on 1 Aug 2005 After a painful three mile drift to the finish of the 20th Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race, the beginnings of a forecast sou ‘east change started to stir and with less than half a mile to go to the finish, line honours winner, Wild Oats X, was able to pop a spinnaker for the cameras.

As the breeze faded in the final stages the helmsman on Bob Oatley’s Wild Oats X, Mark Richards, and tactician, Michael Coxon, never stopped looking back, admitting later on the dock that there is great rivalry between Wild Oats and Wild Joe. The latter is Oatley’s former boat, which is six feet shorter, but carries the same canting keel technology and boasted an equally enviable crew line up for this race.

With an official finish time of 9.56am this morning and an elapsed time of 1 day 20 hours, 56 minutes and 51 seconds, Wild Oats took line honours in its inaugural Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race, but finished well outside the race record of 27 hours 35 minutes set by George Snow’s Brindabella in 1999.

‘It was an extremely pleasant race,’ admitted Richards on the dock at Southport Yacht Club today. ‘We didn’t get one drop of water on the deck the entire race.'

Richards also could not name one tough stage of the race, but he said they were ‘always pinching for every foot’ they could get. While they missed the record this year, he said the boat would be back next year for another attempt.

Australian women’s match racing national champion, 21 year-old Nicky Souter, was the only female crewmember amongst the 15 on board Wild Oats and she also enjoyed her second major offshore race on the boat.

‘The boys treat me like one of them,’ she laughed, adding that it was inevitable she would end up being a sailor having grown up on Scotland Island in Sydney’s northern beaches - and her father is a former skiff champion.

Steven David’s Wild Joe finished at 11.17am this morning, with the next group of three, the Queensland entry Vanguard (Neale Cawse), Brindabella and Sean Langman’s AAPT, due to finish shortly and within minutes of each other.

‘It’s boat for boat,’ said a nervous Geoff Cropley, crewman on Brindabella, as they were level with Vanguard and sailing in a shifting 4-knot easterly breeze. ‘Anything could happen from here,’ he admitted, as both boats vied for the final line honours podium position.

Further back in the fleet, Roger Hickman’s Farr 43 Wild Rose, another of Oatley’s former yachts, is racing hard for a good handicap result, having bet a bottle of Wild Turkey against Wild Oats X and Wild Joe.

Hickman commented this morning that he had not seen racing this close in more than two decades with at least 20 yachts sailing in close range of each other.

CYCA Commodore, Geoff Lavis on UBS Wild Thing, is amongst the many skippers who have been astounded by the number of whale sightings during this race.

‘They have come within three metres of us at times and have been slapping their tails on top of the water. It has been a really spectacular display of nature,’ Commodore Lavis said this morning.

For current yacht positions and provisional handicap placings, go to the official web site http://goldcoast.cyca.com.au