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Skandia extends her lead but new race record proving elusive

Home 2006 Skandia extends her lead but new race record proving elusive

Skandia South West of Tasman Island and heading to the finish line

Based on their current speed, the Sydney Gold Coast Race leader Skandia will finish up to two hours outside the time set by George Snow’s Brindabella in 1999 but with stronger winds anticipated further north, the boat’s navigator is predicting they could finish as close as 15 minutes on the wrong side of the record time.

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Based on their current speed, the Sydney Gold Coast Race leader Skandia will finish up to two hours outside the time set by George Snow’s Brindabella in 1999 but with stronger winds anticipated further north, the boat’s navigator is predicting they could finish as close as 15 minutes on the wrong side of the record time.

At 6.30am AEST this morning Skandia was sailing past the Solitary Islands north of Coffs Harbour averaging 10 knots and more than 50 miles clear of the nearest boat, John Woodruff and Eric Robinson’s Volvo 60 Seriously TEN which has overnight moved into second place on line honours.

At 5.00am this morning, Skandia’s navigator Will Oxley reported, “We still have a good breeze of 15-20 knots from the SW. A good night so far but the record is proving rather hard to beat. We will need to be very quick over the rest of the race course. Time will tell”.
 
Steven David’s Wild Joe has moved to third in the fleet ahead of Leslie Green’s Swan 601 Ginger, contesting its first race under her new owner.


 

The big mover of the night is Stephen Ainsworth’s Reichel/Pugh 60 Loki which is slowly clawing its way back through the fleet having fallen back to 11th place yesterday evening after a fantastic start on Sydney Harbour. She is currently sailing in 6th place on line honours.

Way offshore, two boats have overnight enjoyed a close tussle. Laurence Freedman’s Espresso Forte, a Farr 54, and Anthony Paterson’s Mumm 30 Two Truck were in very close company around 2.30am this morning but daybreak has revealed Espresso Forte has finally managed to shake the much smaller boat off its tail.

Phillip Rowe’s Jarken 38 MRZ is the fourth race casualty, retiring overnight with mainsail damage while on Martin James’ Infinity III, they are currently repairing their torn mainsail.

“We’ve got a big tear in the main which we are about to try and fix, and we’ve stripped a halyard casing which forced us to race without a headsail for an hour.

“All up we’ve lost six or seven miles,” said an upbeat James this morning.