Wild Oats and supermaxis loom as favourites for Sydney to Hobart with wild weather predicted

Supermaxis from Sydney to Hobart will have favorable northerly winds for most of their journey, but smaller boats have been warned of dangerous conditions that will hit the fleet on Boxing Day.

A fleet of 109 yachts will set sail from Sydney Harbor from 1pm local time on Monday after the race was canceled in 2020 and halted in 2021 due to the COVID pandemic.

Hamilton Island Wild Oats sail during the 2022 SOLAS Big Boat Challenge in Sydney Harbor earlier this month

Competitors can expect to be greeted by strong winds and high seas at the end of the second day of the 77th edition of the regatta, with experts warning that it could pose a danger to smaller boats.

‘It’s very windy. If you averaged 35 knots and hit 40, you’d have trouble even running a kite,” said leading yachting forecaster Roger Badham. news corporation.

‘You may be in danger of breaking things. And you can’t go faster because you can’t run nice big spinnakers. It’s all about taking care of your boat on Tuesday night.

LDV Comanche holds the record for the 628nm trip to Hobart in just over a day and nine hours.

With the current weather forecast predicting a downwind race for the favourites, Andoo Comanche and Wild Oats have emerged as pre-race favorites this year.

Although last year’s LawConnect super maxi runner-up cannot be ruled out either, after skipper and owner Christian Beck told Channel Seven that the boat had lost over 300kg of excess weight for this year’s race.

LawConnect at the SOLAS Big Boat Challenge. The crew have lightened the load by 300kg and are confident of a strong performance in Sydney to Hobart after finishing second last year.

This ship is getting quite old and quite overweight. Everything we’ve done over the years to try to lose weight hasn’t really worked, so last year we made a change, we decided to make the bowsprit bigger,” Beck said.

“If you look at how massive it is, it’s actually the largest in the fleet, and when it comes to bowsprit, size does matter.

“The thing about a bowsprit is it’s all about the surface area of ​​the sails, so if you have a big bowsprit like this you can basically hold bigger sails, so it’s a big, wide, heavy boat, and we’re trying to get as many sails out.” there as we can.

The Weather Bureau forecast predominantly northeasterly winds Saturday that turned cool to strong Tuesday and Wednesday.

For the first time since 2019, Sydney to Hobart is the same again. A group of international yachts are competing in one of the most grueling ocean races in the world since Boxing Day.

That will help all four supermaxis, with the winner of line honors likely to finish on Wednesday morning, potentially close to a race-record time.

Conditions will be more varied and challenging for the rest of the fleet later on.

A cold front is expected to bring a shift to the southwest on Wednesday with southerly winds on Thursday morning.

Strong wind warnings are likely from Tuesday night with a possible high wind warning on Wednesday.

Winds will trend east to northeast beginning Thursday as a high pressure ridge develops.