Rolex Sydney Hobart- Comanche leads in softening morning breeze

by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com on 27 Dec 2014 The US supermaxi Comanche (Jim & Kristy Clark) continues to enjoy a small lead at the head of the Rolex Sydney Hobart fleet.

As the race enters its second day, organisers told Sail-World at 6.00am local time that the fleet was experiencing SW winds of 12-13kts and that these would ease further during the day.

Conditions at Montague Island in the vicinity of the race leaders, off the SE Australian coast, showed a reducing breeze which was just 5kts, gusting 6kts at 7.00am on Day 2. The breeze had begun easing around 3.00am, as forecast by Predictwind before the start of the race.

Comanche leads from the record holder Wild Oats XI (Oatley family), she is one or two miles astern of Comanche, with Team Ragamuffin (Syd Fischer) third and Perpetual Loyal (Anthony Bell) fourth. The other US supermaxi RIO 100 (Manouch Moshayedi) is in seventh place overall and is the first non-canting keelboat.

The two Volvo 70's Black Jack (Peter Harburg) and Giacomo (Jim Delegat NZL) are having a great battle with Black Jack, the former Telefonica moving through the more recent vintage Giacomo during the night to lie four miles ahead, according to the race leaderboard.

Daybreak on the second day was predicted to be a crucial point in the race, as pre-start weather routing recommended the boats to break away from the Australian coast and head out into the Tasman to take advantage of a potentially faster sailing angle, with the breeze expected to clock around to a more northerly direction and lighten.

That prognosis would then give the canting keel maxis a better sailing angle in the final stages of the race as the boats close in on Tasman Island in lighter winds.

The latest routing models from Predictwind show that the leaders are recommended to move away from the rhumb line, a move which Comanche appears to have made.Winds for the rest of the race are expected to average less than 15kts for the race leaders, easing down to single digit wind strengths towards noon, and progressively clocking to the west before building back in the afternoon.

Predictwind uses four weather feeds to produce its routing, two of these are refined by Predictwind, and two are standard weather feeds. For Comanche all four feeds are producing a very similar course trajectory, and have done so for the last 24 hours, indicating that the certainty of the prognosis is very high.

At midnight tonight, Day 2, the breeze is expected to be in a N - NW direction. For boats who have opted to take the direct route to Hobart this will mean they are having to run at a much slower angle, even though they sail a shorter distance. The only boat who could come into contention in these conditions is the Bakewell-White supermaxi which is more orientated towards light air running and can sail deeper angles than the canting keel boats.

Seven boats have retired from the race. One yacht, Pretty Fly 3, has a tracker that is not functioning and her positions are calculated by organisers.