Sydney-Hobart 2014

Discussion in 'Sailboats' started by Doug Lord, Nov 25, 2014.

  1. whitepointer23

    whitepointer23 Previous Member

    I am only a few kms from bass Straight and its been warm with light winds for a few days. A few storm cells around but mostly humid with light shifting breezes so it might be a slow trip across the paddock this year.
     
  2. whitepointer23

    whitepointer23 Previous Member

    Does wild oats have a 300 evinrude on the back for calm days .
     
  3. Moggy
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    Moggy Senior Member

    I think it is a diesel... maybe a squidge under 300? Perhaps they could waggle the keel quickly, or continuously roll tack like the Laser guys could, that oughta make straddling a lake a little easier! Be worth a few hundred pages of squabble here too!

    I think that Comanche has a 500 johnson though!?!
     
  4. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    Sydney-Hobart 2014---Comanche

    From Scuttlebutt Europe tonight:

    Verdier & VPLP Architects' Point Of View Before The Sydney Hobart

    Launched in September 2014, Comanche resulted from the studies realised on the Macif and Banque Populaire Imoca monohulls, who finished first and second in the 2012 Vendee Globe.

    What distinguishes her from her 100 footer competitors, such as Wild Oats or Perpetual Loyal, are her great beam, her high mast which is placed very far aft and her boom perpendicular to the transom. Comanche is a virtually narrow boat; she is made to sail heeled thanks to the appendages' plan. As such, she enjoys a high fineness ratio sail plan. Inside, the structure is optimized to make the boat more resistant to damage. The cockpit was designed bearing in mind manual manoeuvres to gain weight.

    Guillaume Verdier: "Comanche is not just an object, it is the result of a great collaboration with skipper Ken Read, of the Tim Hacket / Casey Smith team and the boat builder Brandon Linton. We all enjoyed working on this project. It was a positive and constructive collaboration: every mistake or difficulty was an opportunity to bounce back and find new ideas."

    Vincent Lauriot-Prevost: "After the IMOCAs, this was our first exercise in the 100 footer monohull category. As light as possible, as strong as possible, such was the equation we shared with Guillaume Verdier. Her very powerful hull, her maximum draught to enter most marinas, her low freeboard height and side water ballasts make her the most powerful ship in the 100 footer fleet."

    During the Solas Big Boat Challenge, on December 9th in Sydney Harbour, Comanche's first confrontation with her Sydney Hobart contestants revealed all the boat's potential in light conditions.




    Go Wild Oats XI!!!
     
  5. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

  6. Doug Lord
    Joined: May 2009
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    From the Sydney-Hobart website:

    Sailors in this year’s Rolex Sydney Hobart should watch what they eat on Christmas day or they may well watch Christmas dinner all over again on Boxing Day.

    At the Christmas Eve briefing at the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia this morning, the skippers of the 117 competing yachts were told the race will start in a 15 knot southerly, with 20 knots of breeze offshore. By Friday afternoon it will be blowing between 20 to 30 knots, and with a southerly wind pushing against a current from the north, the seas will be very choppy and uncomfortable, on a two to two and a half metre swell.
    It all makes for a very uncomfortable day before the sailors have time to fully develop their sea-legs. Many crews will find managing sea-sickness as big a challenge as managing the boat.
    Those 20 knot southerlies will persist over Friday night, though as the frontrunners get further south they will cross a ridge of pressure that will swing the wind from the south-east to the south-west and the breeze will be pretty light as they head across Bass Strait.
    It will freshen up from the west in the afternoon in the Strait, boosting the frontrunners, while further north, the back half of the fleet will begin to revel in their first taste of a northerly.
    On Saturday evening the wind in Bass Strait will be pretty light again, though it will be fresher from the west as the leaders approach Tasman Island.
    The breeze will freshen up on Sunday, and the back half of the fleet will scoot across Bass Strait in a good overnight northerly, and really crack down the Tasmanian coast as the Bureau of Meteorology expects to issue a strong wind warning.
    It is a real mixed bag of a forecast for the super maxis racing for line honours. They are such different styles of boat and the forecast doesn’t appear to overwhelmingly favour one design over another.
    Anthony Bell though, the skipper of the wide powerful Perpetual Loyal, likes what he sees for that first day. “The first15 hours are something we are probably really looking forward to,” he says, though all the skippers of the big boats concede that there will be times on Friday afternoon when they will have to slow their boats down.
    “Going into a southerly on the first day is always a challenge, especially for the big boats,” says Wild Oats XI skipper Mark Richards. “We’re going twice the speed of the smaller boats in those conditions, so it’s a real challenge to keep the big boats in one piece. Our boat being 10 years old is a bit of an advantage for us, because we know the boat very well.”
    Ken Read, the skipper of the untried Comanche agrees that the first day will be a big test for the brand new super maxi. “We’ll all try to keep our Christmas dinners down,” he jokes.
    ”It would almost be a bit of a shock if we didn’t get a southerly front in this race, so we’ll try to keep it in one piece, but this is an entirely untested boat and I am as curious as anybody about how she is going to react. We’re ready to go. There are only so many days of preparation you can do.”
    This is not a wonderful forecast for the very wide American dubbed ‘the aircraft carrier’. “You could just about fit two Wild Oats XI’s inside our hull,” Read says. “The design concepts were built for two very different reasons.
    “Comanche is meant to reach across the oceans - to break Trans-Atlantic records - to take advantage of cracked-sheet conditions. Did we try to design something that would go upwind? Of course, but she’s s not designed specifically for this race.”
    Yet while boat preservation may be the order of the day on the maxis, on day one Bell is inclined to press his advantage. “My tactician reckons the rich will get richer in this race. The front is something we want to do really well at, and for us to do well in this race, we’ll probably have to chance our arm a little bit.”
    The dark horses will be Rio 100 and Syd Fischer’s as yet pretty much unseen Ragamuffin 100. Rio’s skipper Manouch Moshayedi likes the fact that without technical do-dads like canting keels, the lightweight Rio is a lot simple than her rivals. “There is less to go wrong,” he says.
    Syd, despite some hectic days repairing a major structural problem with Ragamuffin 100’s deck is, as always, keeping his cards close to his chest. I think Rags will hold together,” he offers, “she’s pretty slippery through the water.”
    In a perverse sort of way, Wild Oats XI had a bit of luck on the weekend. A boom fitting broke. “It was a problem that has obviously been there for a quite a while. It’s one of those things you don’t see until it actually breaks, so we were fortunate that, in not a lot of wind, it broke on Saturday.”
    They are still fixing the problem, and the crew will have to interrupt Chrissie lunch for a test sail, but the fault could have so easily have revealed itself six days later than it did.
    All the big boat skippers concede that this will not be a race-record year.
    It will be a slow race, and the slower it is the happier Lindsay May, the renowned navigator on Love & War will be. He steered the veteran yacht to a win in the slow, long-bash-to windward 2006 race and he likes what he sees this year. With a good northerly expected, after the hot shots are already in port, he’s even put a couple of quid on the boat at the TAB, though he reckons he will have to watch out for Wild Rose, another veteran designed to the old IOR rule.
    May wants conditions in Bass Strait to stay soft for the 50 and 60 footers, as well as the race leaders, so a lot depends on the timing of the wind transitions. There will almost certainly be a few holes off the Tasmanian coast as well. “If they have just a couple of hours when they are below their optimum rating figures, it really helps us slower boats,” he says.
    “The soft patch on the second day – how long it lasts and how quickly it fills in could take the race from the 45 to the 50 footers,” says Wild Rose’s skipper, Roger Hickman. “If there is fast running down the Tasmanian coast it could be the 50s that win this race. They’ll run away from us.”
    Ray Roberts owner of the Farr 55, OneSails Racing, agrees. “If we can crack sheets we can do comparatively well.”
    Things will change between now and Boxing Day. The initial front is coming through earlier than the Bureau had anticipated earlier this week, and the speed and strength of the westerly transition remains the sixty-four thousand dollar question.
    The forecast seems to have a little bit for everyone, tantalising the swift 40 footers like St George Midnight Rambler and Chutzpah as well as the usual suspects, the 60 foot Ichi Ban, the TP52s and the Cookson 50, Victoire, last year’s winner.
    “There’s another front coming in that could hurt the tailenders. I always worry about the timing on that,” says Victoire’s owner, Darryl Hodgkinson, “but for us, being a 50 footer, I’m reasonably pleased.
    “I’ve not got a sad face. I’ve got a little smile,” Hodgkinson says.
    The start of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race will be broadcast live on the Seven Network throughout Australia and webcast live to a global audience on Yahoo!7.
    A Parade of Sail will take place from 10.30am to 11.30am, before a fleet of 117 will set sail from three start lines in the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race on December 26 at 1.00pm AEDT.
    By Jim Gale, RSHYR media


    .
     
  7. Doug Lord
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    So far NO VIDEO and intermittent radio-8:49-looks like we won't see the start again!!!!


    Should be able to watch the start here: https://au.sports.yahoo.com/
    or here: http://www.rolexsydneyhobart.com/
    http://rolexsydneyhobart.com/spectators/following-the-race/
    Twitter: https://twitter.com/rshyr
    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RolexSydneyHobart
    Also live radio here: http://www.spreaker.com/user/sunsetradioco/live-rolex-sydney-hobart-action
    http://www.spreaker.com/user/sunsetradioco
    TRACKER: http://rolexsydneyhobart.com/tracker/

    https://au.sports.yahoo.com/news/sydney-hobart/
    =====
    Start at 9PMEST December 25th in the USA. Broadcast starts at 8:30
    Note: Last year for the first time the broadcast was not watchable in the US. The word is that it will be this year.
     
    Last edited: Dec 25, 2014
  8. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

  9. whitepointer23

    whitepointer23 Previous Member

    Commanche is leaving oats for dead at the start.
     
  10. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

  11. whitepointer23

    whitepointer23 Previous Member

    Is raga muffin in the lead now.
     
  12. Moggy
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    Moggy Senior Member

    Looks like the boats that went inshore have the advantage... for now.
     
  13. rwatson
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    rwatson Senior Member

    Perpetual Loyal leading, Ragamuffin inshore, Commanche and Wild Oats behind, further out to sea. I guess Wild oats had to cover, as the the inshore run was the better leg. They will also probably get a better 'lift' as the winds go more easterly.

    http://rolexsydneyhobart.com/tracker/

    a link for convenience for later posts
     
  14. Gary Baigent
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    Gary Baigent Senior Member

    Looks like WOXI and the big Indian are also rans at the moment to Perpetual and Rags.
     

  15. Moggy
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    Moggy Senior Member

    That big Indian is a bit devastating off the breeze... I used to work the Harbour, I don't think my old work boat could get out the heads that quickly!
     
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