Skandia collision

by Rob Kothe on 27 Dec 2003 Navigator Will Oxley reported by sat phone this afternoon that with a loud bang, the 98 footer line honours leader Skandia came to a dead stop from 13 knots in Bass Strait at 15:50 this afternoon.

With crew packed tightly on the rail, there were no injuries. Oxley was at his nav station and reports, ‘It was a shuddering stop. We stopped dead in the water and we slid sideways, we were preparing to drop sails when what-ever was on our keel came loose and suddenly we were away again.

Thankfully no one was injured. We’ve checked the keel as best we can and there appears to be no damage. Earlier this afternoon we had to swerve to miss a sunfish, so the theory is that it was a sunfish again. Some kind of soft marine object anyway, but it seemed pretty hard as we stopped.

The whole thing cost us a few minutes, but Zana did not seem to move up on us.

We are now well into Bass Strait, with a reef in the main and a number 4, we are close to being hard on the breeze, just cracked a little, like always in the Hobart race.

So it seems its Skandia 1, Sunfish 0 but we are going to worry about what damage might have been done for the next 300 miles.'

At 7pm this evening Skandia was midway across the ‘paddock’ sailing at 13 knots, tracking towards Tasman Light, two miles ahead of Zana, with Grundig slipping back in the race.

Nicorette is now 30 miles behind the leader, followed by Brindabella, nine miles behind her. The two Volvo 60’s, the ex-djuice campainers, Andrew Short Marine and Seriously Ten are another ten miles back.

The basking shark or sunfish (mola mola) are the world’s largest bony fish. They grow up to four metres in length and have recorded weights of 1800kg.

Found in all tropical and temperate oceans, the giant ocean sunfish, eats mainly jellyfish.

Ocean racing yachts have hit them regularly as Brindabella did in the 1993 Hobart race and as Sting did in last years Hobart race.