Sydney to Hobart boats make their way down into the Bass Strait on day two

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Master Lock Comanche is maintaining its five nautical mile lead over last year's winner LawConnect as the two supermaxis race down Australia's east coast.

Transcript

00:00Master Lock Comanche is maintaining its narrow lead in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.

00:07It's been around five nautical miles ahead of last year's line honours winner Law Connect

00:11for the last few hours.

00:13Reporter Selina Bryan is on the docks in Hobart.

00:16Selina, how did the race go this morning?

00:19Well look, it's been pretty slow, it's been pretty cold and rough.

00:23We're now almost 24 hours into this race

00:26and the yachts have been facing some pretty strong southerly winds and big swells

00:30and that really hit them overnight.

00:32It caused, we're now up to about eight retirees I think,

00:35so 120 boats remaining in this race with eight retirees.

00:39A few of those have been this morning and then the rest were kind of yesterday and overnight.

00:43The most high profile of those is Wild Oats 100.

00:47They had some rigging issues overnight

00:49and said that they were dealing with a broken rudder

00:52and that happened kind of around half past three.

00:54They spent a few hours trying to fix some of those issues

00:57but ultimately decided that they'd lost too much time

00:59and that they needed to pull out of the race.

01:01We've also seen a couple of retirements this morning due to seasickness

01:05which I think points to that comment about the rough seas that they've been facing.

01:09Although some of them have said that they have experienced

01:12significantly worse conditions in previous years.

01:15We also heard from Law Connect this morning.

01:17So they led out of Sydney Harbour but they've been dropped back overnight behind Comanche

01:24and they've been sitting at about four to five to six nautical miles behind the leader there

01:28for the rest of the, kind of through the night and then this morning as well.

01:32They said their night was like a horror show.

01:35They had a few problems including their main sheet breaking

01:38which they spent quite a lot of time trying to fix

01:41and then they've had issues with the instruments not working as well.

01:44So some of their time they've been sailing blind in terms of what wind they're expecting.

01:48They contributed those problems to the fact that they have fallen behind Comanche

01:54and been unable to kind of narrow that gap since then.

01:58Now those leading super maxis have entered Bass Strait now.

02:02We've also heard about, from some of the conditions from David Jacob,

02:06the Vice Commodore at the Australian Cruising Yacht Club.

02:11So it was pretty tough conditions last night.

02:13The sea was round about two, three metres.

02:16The boats were going straight into the wind

02:18so the boats were slamming into the waves and down the waves.

02:22It was tough on the boats, tough on the crews.

02:24They had a very uncomfortable, cold, wet night.

02:28Not many sort of bacon and eggs this morning.

02:31I don't think it's being had.

02:33And that's tough on the boats but actually less retirements than we expected.

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