Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race 2023 as it happened: Andoo Comanche holds slender lead, Olympian among three more retirements

Super maxis Andoo Comanche and LawConnect battled for the lead late on Wednesday as the two 100-foot yachts separated themselves from the rest of the Sydney to Hobart fleet.

Wild weather on the first night ended any hopes of a race record and eight of the 103 starting boats had withdrawn 24 hours into the race.

LawConnect was about 10 nautical miles behind Andoo Comanche late on Wednesday.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

Reigning line honours champion Comanche was exchanging the lead with LawConnect, runner-up at the past three events, as the pair crossed Bass Strait.

“We’ve had a little bit of everything. The wildest [weather] was literally 180-degree wind shifts,” LawConnect navigator Chris Lewis said in a video on social media.

Late on Wednesday afternoon, Comanche led LawConnect by about 10 nautical miles ahead of their expected overnight finish of the 628-nautical-mile race to Constitution Dock in Hobart.

Shane Connelly, skipper of two-handed yacht Rum Rebellion which retired on Tuesday night, said he was briefly thrown overboard during a storm.

Connelly said a “micro-burst” of wind hit his yacht during a ferocious storm, throwing him off the port side. He managed to attach his tether and was lifted back on board as the yacht righted.

The skipper said he and crewmate Tony Sutton decided to retire after being concerned he may have suffered a concussion.

“The safety drills and systems all worked and we could sort ourselves out,” he said.

AP

That’s all for our live coverage of the Sydney to Hobart today. It’s been an eventful day again with 11 yachts retiring due to difficult conditions at sea.

Andoo Comanche and LawConnect continue to duel for supremacy way out in front with a lead of more than 100 nautical miles on the next group of vessels coming down the coast.

Andoo Comanche on her way out of Sydney Heads.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

Andoo Comanche claimed the lead from LawConnect around lunchtime today and has held it throughout the afternoon, though that advantage has stayed in single figures and sets up a tense finish throughout the night - they’re around 200 nautical miles away from the finish line.

Latest predictions are for a potentially fast finish coming down the coast of Tasmania, with the two leaders tipped to arrive in Hobart in daylight on Thursday morning. The race record is well and truly beyond them. The majority of boats are still yet to enter the Bass Strait.

The race for line honours

1. Andoo Comanche - John Winning Jnr
2. LawConnect - Christian Beck
3. URM Group - Anthony Johnston
4. MoneyPenny - Sean Langman
5. Alive - Philip Turner

Until tomorrow, thanks for tuning in.

LawConnect continues to close that gap to Andoo Comanche - she’s whittled away another two nautical miles and now trails by 6.9 nautical miles. A morning finish time on Thursday is still predicted for the front-runners.

More than 100 nautical miles further back, there’s a fair old stoush for third-place in the line honours unfolding.

As it stands, URM Group holds a 4.5 nautical mile lead on Moneypenny, while Alive is only a few more miles adrift as well.

The URM Group crew as they left Sydney Harbour on Boxing Day.Credit: Getty

Speaking earlier in the day as the trio rounded Gabo Island, just on the Victorian side of the border with NSW, URM Group navigator Alice Parker summed it up for many in the treacherous conditions.

“I had a good few moments with a bucket between my legs, but otherwise, everyone is in good spirits,” she said.

“We’re all a bit wet, sliding around a bit, but the boats in really good shape.”

“Over the last couple of hours, we’ve been sailing quite well … we’re now matching them [Alive], or slightly in front, with Moneypenny at our stern.

“We’re a bit nervous about some of the 52s on the ‘beach,’ [referring to sailing close to the coast] or closer to the south-east corner of Victoria. They’ve been ripping along in what looks like a pretty good sou-easterly. But things are looking good for us now.”

The wild weather claims another three boats as the leaders surge onward - LawConnect is closing that gap on Andoo Comanche slightly, her lead has been trimmed back to 8.5 nautical miles.

Further back though, Tumbleweed, raced by two-time US Olympian Graham Biehl and his father-in-law Nigel Nattrass in the two-handed division, has also bowed out.

This was their first entry aboard a two-hander, though Nattrass is an 11-time veteran of the race. According to race officials, they’ve called time on their efforts this year off the coast of Moruya on the NSW south coast, citing sea sickness and fatigue.

Millennium Falcon - skippered by Robert Griffiths - has also retired due to sickness around Nowra, while Luna Blue has pulled out after passing Ulladulla further south.

Luna Blue is expected to return to Sydney, but damaged equipment has ended her journey to Hobart early.

Steady as she goes out in front for line honours leaders Andoo Comanche and LawConnect. According to the official race tracker, Andoo has a lead of almost 10 nautical miles as they hit the same latitude as Tasmania’s northern tips.

At the helm of Andoo as always is John ‘Herman’ Winning jnr - the man can spin a yarn. Like the day he came half a nonchalant second from death while skydiving.

Pre-flight, John Winning jnr moments before take-off.

“Skydiving out of a plane, you hit the air at pace,” Winning says.

“Out of the blimp, it’s dead silent. It’s like you’re falling off a cliff, it’s quite peaceful. You gain speed, hit terminal velocity and pull your chute.”

Except Winning doesn’t. It’s his ninth jump of the day. Half a second longer, and it’s his last.

“There’s a safety device that releases your parachute at 1000 feet [300 metres from the ground],” he explains.

“It only goes off if a skydiver is unconscious, something’s gone seriously wrong. You don’t want it going off at all.

“I pulled my own chute late and when I’ve hit the ground, the safety officer ran over, looked at my digital altimeter and it read 1050 feet.

Above it all: Andoo Comanche skipper John ‘Herman’ Winning jnr in full flight solo skydiving.

“I was less than a second away from having two parachutes deployed, those two chutes inevitably getting tangled, hitting the ground and in that scenario, you’re dead.

“That was me done for the day, I learned my lesson and have been jumping plenty of times since then, that was five or six years ago.”

Read the full story here.

That’s all from me today, but Dan Walsh will be taking you through the next couple of hours.

If you’re just joining us, here’s a quick run down of what’s happened this morning:

• Supermaxis Andoo Comanche and LawConnect have been swapping places at the front of the pack all morning, but Comanche has the upper-hand heading into the afternoon, eight nautical miles in front of LawConnect.
• Eight boats have retired so far, including two-man boat Rum Rebellion which withdrew from the race last night after skipper Shane Connelly was thrown overboard. Connelly is okay, and the boat is safely back in Sydney.
• Sydney to Hobart veteran Peter Shipway said the frontrunners have ‘no chance’ of breaking the race record, and he thinks it’s likely no one will cross the line until tomorrow morning.

Andoo Comanche sails out of the Sydney Heads at the start of the Sydney Hobart Yacht Race.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

When Wenee Yap told her mother-in-law she would be racing in this year’s Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race she had one piece of advice: “don’t die”.

A Malaysian-born self-confessed nerd who grew up in “the sticks” of Western Sydney, Yap’s family didn’t even spend summers at the beach, let alone near a boat.

Wenee Yap is part of the LawConnect crew for this year’s Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race.Credit: James Brickwood

But when the opportunity came up at work to go in the draw to be part of the crew for LawConnect - the super maxi owned by Christian Beck, the founder of legal software firm LEAP - Yap threw her hat into the ring.

Ten months later, she’s one of four LEAP employees randomly selected as part of the 21-person crew bound for Hobart.

Read the full story here.

Stretching 250 kilometres from west to east and 200 kilometres north to south at its narrowest point is the Bass Strait (or just Bass Strait, as many people call it) that separates Victoria and Tasmania. It might look like any other stretch of ocean – big, blue and mostly empty – but hidden just below the surface is another world of mountains and canyons, lakes and cliffs. And they all affect what happens on its surface.

Bass Strait was once not a body of water. For much of the world’s ancient history, Tasmania and Australia’s mainland were connected by a long strip of land called the Bassian Plain.

Indigenous Australians crossed into Tasmania via the Bassian Plain tens of thousands of years ago. But about 18,000 years ago, during the end of the last global ice age, the melting of ice caps around the world resulted in the flooding of the lowest sections of the plain.

In this map, sand dunes under Bass Strait reveal evidence of the Bassian Plain.Credit: Geoscience Australia

What were once dune-lined areas of coast are now all underwater. The upshot? Bass Strait is shallow. It has an average depth of just 60 metres, presenting risks to less experienced sailors who are used to navigating in deep ocean waters.

Read the full explainer from Anthony Segaert here.

It’s tough going out there for the two-handed boats in the fleet, with Currawong, Rum Rebellion and Pacman all retiring in the first 24-hours.

But there are still 15 two-person boats racing to the finish line, including favourite Mistral, which is leading the two-handed division and has just passed Bermagui.

Mistral is 192 nautical miles off race leader Andoo Comanche, and about 24 nautical miles in front of the next closest two-person yacht, Cinnamon Girl.

Named after a Neil Young song, Cinnamon Girl is skippered by Irishmen Cian McCarthy and Sam Hunt.

Irish skipper Cian McCarthy is doing his first Sydney to Hobart on two-man boat Cinnamon Girl.Credit: Andrea Francolini