Wild Oats XI has claimed a historic eighth line honors win at the 2014 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race. In what skipper Mark Richards described as the crew\u2019s most hard-fought line honors triumph, Wild Oats XI held off the impressive challenge posed by Comanche, the newly-launched entry from the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Report provided from Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race media:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n Completing the race in 2 days, 2 hours, 3 minutes and 26 seconds, Wild Oats XI finished eight hours shy of the race record she set in 2012. Proud owner Bob Oatley watched from the water as his boat and crew surpassed the record of line honors wins set by Morna\/Kurrewa IV between 1946-1960. \u201cIt\u2019s a miracle \u2013 and we will be back next year, yes, we\u2019ll definitely be back next year,\u201d exclaimed Oatley. \u201cShe is the best boat in the world; she\u2019s proved that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n Richards was visibly ecstatic. \u201cThis was by far the most satisfying (line honors win), we had a real race. It was long race, with a lot of competition from Comanche from the start. We worked hard from the beginning, and it paid off. It was a tough first night in the southerly as the boat sustained damage and we had to hang on in there as Comanche had the edge on us.\u201d An edge which lasted for the first 24 hours, at which point Wild Oats XI assumed control of the race. \u201cThe key moment was crossing the light air patch in the southeast of Australia. It was important to keep as close as we could at the start to Comanche. The two boats have different characteristics and had their moments,\u201d confirmed Spanish navigator Juan Vila. Wild Oats XI built an impressive lead throughout the second evening, at one point leading Jim Clark and Kristy-Hinze Clark\u2019s Comanche by 40 nautical miles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n Comanche finished 49 minutes after Wild Oats XI; the crew\u2019s first Rolex Sydney Hobart experience \u2013 coming just months after the boat\u2019s launch \u2013 was a rewarding one. \u201cHuge credit to Wild Oats, they deserve their record. We tried hard to take it from them. Our team did an unbelievable job,\u201d explained skipper Ken Read. \u201cOn one hand we are disappointed, on the other, proud of what we put together. Very rarely you go through a race like this and say in hindsight you should have done \u201cx\u201d. Both boats sailed a flawless race.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n Following the retirement of Perpetual Loyal during the first evening, the battle for line honors became a two-horse race. When Comanche arrived in Hobart, the third boat on the water\u2014Manouch Moshayedi\u2019s RIO 100 (USA)\u2014was still some 100 nautical miles behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n With line honors sealed, the focus now turns to the progress of the remainder of the fleet and the quest to identify which boat will become the race\u2019s overall handicap winner and lift the coveted Tattersall\u2019s Cup. Almost all of the fleet have now negotiated the halfway point and are set for boisterous conditions during the third night. Currently leading on handicap is the race\u2019s smallest and oldest boat, Maluka of Kermandie, owned by Sean Langman.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s Wild Oats dismissing Comanche in the 70th battle for line honors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40466,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"BS_author_type":"BS_author_is_guest","BS_guest_author_name":"Sailing World Staff","BS_guest_author_url":"","hydra_display_date":"20141230","hydra_display_updated":false,"_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":"159","_yoast_wpseo_metadesc":"Bragging rights remain with Bob Oatley's Wild Oat's boys after making the best of a light-air transition to lead Comanche into Hobart.","_yoast_wpseo_title":"Line Honors: Rolex Sydney Hobart Race 2015 %%sep%% %%sitename%%","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","arc_story_id":"Y3YWRCZYR56ON7TOGSPJSG4R3Q","arc_website_url":"video-rolex-sydney-hobart-race-2015\/","custom_permalink":"","arc_subtype":"right-sidebar","arc_exclude_from_feeds":false,"sponsored":false,"sponsored_label":"Sponsored Content","sponsored_display_label":false,"sponsored_image":0,"post_right_rail":true,"post_right_rail_ad_1":true,"post_right_rail_ad_2":true,"post_right_rail_ad_3":false,"post_right_rail_ad_4":false,"post_right_rail_recirc":true,"fixed_anchor_ad":true,"post_top_ad":true,"post_off_ramp":true,"post_taboola":false,"labels":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[394,642,178],"class_list":["post-70745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-racing","tag-rolex","tag-rolex-sydney-hobart","tag-sailboat-racing"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}