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Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2024

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Start of the 2024 Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race

A gentle start was delivered to those competing in the 2024 Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race. Fifty-one yachts assembled on the start line before the yachts crawled across Sydney Harbour and north up the Tasman Sea.

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2024 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race | Entries Open

The Cruising Yacht Club of Australia (CYCA) is pleased to invite eligible boats to enter 2024 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race.

Congratulations to all the divisional winners of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2023

PHOTOS | 2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Official Prizegiving

PHOTOS | Day 5 Morning - Tasman Island and Storm Bay

PHOTOS | Day 5 and Day 6 finishers

PHOTOS | Official Presentation of Tattersall Cup and Rolex Timepiece to the Overall Winner

2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race - A Race for the Ages

VIDEO | 2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race - Rolex Daily Video Summary

VIDEO | Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2023

VIDEO | 2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Official Prizegiving

VIDEO | Race Update - 31 December Morning

AUDIO | 2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Sked 10

AUDIO | 2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Sked 9

AUDIO | 2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Sked 8

AUDIO | 2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Sked 7

AUDIO | 2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Sked 6

Official rolex sydney hobart merchandise.

Shop the official clothing range of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race and the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia in person at the Club in New South Head Road, Darling Point or online below.  

From casual to technical clothing, there is something for all occasions. Be quick as stock is limited!

Andoo Comanche takes out Sydney to Hobart as supermaxi makes race history

Australian supermaxi Andoo Comanche secured a fourth line honours victory in the gruelling Sydney-Hobart ocean race Wednesday, but fell short of setting a new course record.

The 100-foot yacht, skippered by John Winning Jnr, triumphed in a nail-biting finish in the early hours of Wednesday after leading the blue water classic for much of the race.

It completed a quartet of line honours wins for the boat in the prestigious event since 2015 under a third different owner.

Andoo Comanche crossed with a time of one day, 11 hours, 56 minutes and 48 seconds -- about 20 minutes in front of rival supermaxi Law Connect -- and just under three hours short of its own record.

The current race record of one day, nine hours, 15 minutes and 24 seconds was set by the same Comanche boat under a different skipper in 2017.

Winning Jnr was part of the team that won the event in 2016, but said it was something special to skipper his own crew.

“To do it in a campaign that I was part of putting together is really quite exceptional,” he told national broadcaster ABC.

Last year’s defending champion Black Jack crossed third, followed by Wild Oats, which fell behind after tearing one of its sails earlier in the race.

The 109-strong racing fleet set off from a sun-splashed Sydney Harbour on Monday afternoon, charting their way through the 628-nautical mile course (1163km) to Hobart.

Favourable weather early in the race raised the prospect of toppling that mark, but the strong winds faded as the boats barrelled towards the finish line in Hobart.

The Bass Strait, which separates Tasmania from the mainland, can unleash perilous conditions.

A deep depression proved catastrophic for the fleet in 1998, when six sailors were killed and 55 more were rescued after five boats sank.

Race officials on Tuesday evening said only three of the starting fleet had been forced to retire so far.

One of them, 40-foot yacht Yeah Baby, withdrew less than four hours into the race after reportedly colliding with a massive sunfish.

Dozens of smaller yachts were still in the water Wednesday morning, competing for the handicap prize, which compensates for boat size.

READ BELOW FOR A FULL WRAP OF ALL THE ACTION FROM THE RACE!

Comanche held a consistent lead of 20 nautical miles throughout the afternoon as it moved towards the Derwent with LawConnect telling the Nine papers they expect to arrive at Constitution Dock in Hobart at around 2am AEDT.

As darkness neared, Wild Oats XI fell back into fourth having suffered sail damage overnight while reigning line honours winner Black Jack was third, some five nautical miles behind LawConnect.

FOLLOW THE LIVE RACE TRACKER HERE

Comanche led the fleet into Bass Strait in the early morning, but slipping well behind LDV Comanche’s race record from 2017. Three of the four supermaxis (100-plus-footers) ran well east of the rhumbline to take advantage of marginally stronger winds, before turning back towards the coast of Tasmania around midday.

There were two retirements on the first day, with two-hander Avalanche the first to pull back to shore with a damaged bowsprit after a collision with Llama II just outside the Sydney Heads. Llama II escaped with only superficial damage.

Yeah Baby then retired in the evening after sustaining rudder damage near Wollongong due to a collision with a sunfish, but returned safely to Sydney.

Koa then became the third retirement after breaking her rudder, and is set to be towed to Eden on the NSW south coast, leaving 106 yachts still in the race. Enterprise Next Generation put in a request for redress after helping their stricken rival.

WILD OATS COPS DAMAGE OVERNIGHT

Hamilton Island Wild Oats came within 0.3 nautical miles of Black Jack around 2am overnight in the hunt for third position, before Black Jack surged in the early morning.

The pair traded positions throughout the day, with Wild Oats taking a line significantly closer to rhumbline.

It followed a wild start where both Comanche and Wild Oats were forced to take penalty turns following a series of near-misses in Sydney Harbour (more below).

Wild Oats - hunting a record tenth line honours win - then suffered damage to one of their two largest sails overnight.

Their veteran crewman Chris Links told NewsLocal a seam across one of their large downwind sails split, requiring running repairs on deck.

“It is not an easy job,’’ Links said.

“It has a cable in it and we had to do the repair on deck.

“It took around one and a half hours to repair.’’

LIVE STREAM

Watch live on-board action from LawConnect below.

WILD START CAUSES CHAOS

“Protest, get the flag up, that was f***ing bull***t,” someone yelled on Andoo Comanche in the first two minutes after being cut off by rival supermaxis LawConnect and Black Jack.

URM and LawConnect were also “inches” away from crashing into each other, according to URM skipper Ashley-Jones.

Less than a minute later, one of the crew was heard barking: “you’re asking for a clusterf***, we’re going to be in a collision,” and labelled one rival a “f***ing idiot”.

Comanche hit a turning mark as it exited the heads and was later spotted flying a protest flag of their own, after another boat protested them.

On Wild Oats, which took two penalty turns, skipper Mark Richards could be heard yelling “furl, furl, we are going to do a 720 (penalty turn)”.

Wild Oats famously lost the win in 2017 upon arrival in Hobart, after being handed a one-hour penalty for a rule breach over an incident with Comanche.

That race saw the record time set, with 2022’s Comanche roughly eight nautical miles behind the 2017 edition’s pace late on Monday night and falling further back overnight.

EARLY RACE UPDATES AND PREVIEW (via AFP)

More than 100 yachts set sail Monday on the Sydney-Hobart race as favourable winds raised hopes for a record time in one of the world’s most punishing ocean events.

Fans gathered at coastal vantage points and on spectator boats in a sun-splashed Sydney Harbour, which hours earlier had been shrouded in a thick fog that halted all ferry traffic.

The starting cannon fired to release 109 yachts on the 628-nautical mile (1,200-kilometre) blue water classic.

Crews dashed to get out of the city’s harbour on the first leg of the race down Australia’s eastern coast and across the treacherous Bass Strait towards the finish line in the Tasmanian state capital.

A final weather briefing on race day predicted “fresh to strong” north to northeasterly winds in the next day or so, giving the fastest, 100-foot supermaxi yachts a chance to challenge Comanche’s 2017 record of one day, 9 hours, 15min and 24sec.

Mark Richards, skipper of nine-time line honours-winning supermaxi Wild Oats, said his crew was buoyant after preparing for exactly these conditions.

“We put all our eggs in one basket and we put all our money on black for a downwind forecast and we have ended up getting it,” he told public broadcaster ABC.

“I think Wild Oats is going to be very fast,” Richards added. “The world is going to find out who is the fastest boat downwind.”

Wild Oats is competing for line honours against three rival supermaxis: Andoo Comanche, last year’s line honours winner Black Jack, and LawConnect.

Weather is a critical factor in the race, which was first held in 1945. Though the supermaxis are expected to be powered by northerly winds to a quick finish as early as Tuesday, slower mid- to small-sized boats will still be in the water in the following days facing possible gales and changes in wind direction.

In 1998, when a deep depression exploded over the fleet in the Bass Strait, six men died, five boats sank and 55 sailors were rescued.

Black Jack took line honours last year after a tight tussle with LawConnect, ending years of frustrating near misses to cross the finish line on the River Derwent after two days, 12 hours, 37min and 17sec.

Ichi Ban, which is not racing this year, was the 2021 winner of the overall handicap prize, which takes into account the yachts’ sizes. The boat pipped rival Celestial in a race where dangerous waves and weather conditions saw many withdraw.

International boats are making a return after the race was cancelled in 2020 for the first time due to the pandemic, and Covid hit the fleet last year.

Entrants come from Germany (Orione), Hong Kong (Antipodes), Hungary (Cassiopeia 68), New Caledonia (Eye Candy and Poulpito), New Zealand (Caro), Britain (Sunrise) and the United States (Warrior Won).

Sunrise is a proven ocean racer, winning the 2021 Fastnet Race in Britain, while Caro has been tipped to take out overall handicap honours, although skipper Max Klink played down his prospects ahead of the race saying: “I do not think we are the favourite.”

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Sydney to Hobart yacht race: How two days of sailing came down to just 51 seconds

T he skipper of the line honours-winning yacht in this year's Sydney to Hobart race says the victory is all the more remarkable because his boat, LawConnect, is a "shitbox" compared to second-place getter and race favourite Andoo Comanche.

"I know it looks good on TV but if you go up close to that boat, it's rough as anything and Comanche is a beautiful boat, it's better in every way, four tonnes lighter etc.," Christian Beck said.

"Shitbox" or not, LawConnect overtook Andoo Comanche in the River Derwent in the final moments of the 2023 race to take out its first line honours in a sensational daylight finish, just 51 seconds ahead of its rival.

"The lead changed several times, they took the lead pretty close to the line, we thought there's no way we can get it back," Beck said.

"There were guys [on board] that couldn't watch, it was very nerve-racking."

In a race that took the two leaders almost two days to finish, the turning point began just a couple of nautical miles from the finish line.

As Andoo Comanche tried to build speed off the Hobart suburb of Sandy Bay and seemed to stall in very little wind, Law Connect made its move.

'"They seem to be accelerating out of the jibes a lot quicker than Andoo Comanche, so I don't think Andoo have a lot of options here, I think they're going to get rolled … really aggressive moves by LawConnect," said Lisa Darmanin, a commentator for the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia. 

But, not long after Andoo Comanche snatched it back again.

Then, in the second-closest finish in race history, LawConnect came back about 100 metres from the finish line. 

After being runner-up three times in a row, the sweetest moment arrived for Christian Beck as LawConnect crossed the finish line in a time of 1 day, 19 hours, 3 minutes and 58 seconds.

"I can't believe that result. Honestly it's a dream come true," he said.

How did they pull it off?

So just how did the "underdog" manage to snatch the win away from Andoo Comanche after it held the lead comfortably while rounding the Tasman Peninsula and entering the River Derwent?

As we've heard, a lack of wind was a big factor.

"Our boat is big and wide and heavy and it's fast offshore but it is terribly slow when it is bumpy and no wind," the disappointed skipper of Andoo Comanche, John Winning said. 

"[As the finish line neared] we sent a guy up the rig and he said 'There's no wind at the finish, zero wind at the finish.'" 

But sailors are used to dealing with changes in wind so strategy was obviously a major factor at play too.

As well as the "aggressive jibing" from LawConnect, the winners were focused on learning from Andoo's "mistakes".

"Broadly, the strategy is to watch them and if they get into a bad spot, we avoid that bad spot," Beck said.

Spectator craft another factor

Then there were all the spectator boats to contend with.

In the final moments, a catamaran passed closely to Andoo Comanche and the crew was seen yelling and gesturing.

"We had all the spectator boats and we're trying to clear them out and they were like 'You've won', and we were like 'No! We have not won yet. Stop making waves everything is going to make a difference,'" Winning said.

Tasmania Police said action would be taken against a 57-year-old man for "allegedly breaching" marine and safety regulations.

"The man was skippering a private vessel when it reportedly encroached into the exclusion zone set by Marine and Safety Tasmania," it said in a statement.

The offence carries a fine of up to $3,900.

Winning said he didn't blame spectators for the result.

"I wouldn't have it any other way, I wish there were 500 of them," he said.

"It's even, everyone gets the same thing if they were ahead of us they would have had the wash but unfortunately we got the wash.

"Makes a little difference but that didn't cost us the race, we cost us the race."

And as the bubbly flows for the LawConnect crew, Beck is joking about now being able to offload the "shitbox".

"It's probably a good afternoon to sell it, the afternoon it beats Comanche, probably its highlight of its career, I'm sure."

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