After a terrible start in the 72nd edition of the Rolex Sydney Hobart race, line honours favourite, Wild Oats XI, had clawed her way back to a narrow lead in the 88 yacht fleet late this afternoon. The latest indications from the race tracker indicated that the 30-metre long supermaxi, which is going for her ninth line honours in 12 starts in the classic, was holding a one nautical mile advantage on latitude over arch rivals Scallywag (Seng Huang Lee) and Perpetual LOYAL (Anthony Bell). However, Wild Oats XI held the advantage of sailing directly down the rhumb line (the shortest course) while her rivals were on a more easterly track. All three yachts were averaging between 23 and 25…

Santa looks destined to make a late delivery to the big guns in the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race starting Boxing Day: a rapid and record-breaking downwind sleigh ride to Hobart. Forty-eight hours out from the start of the race on Sydney Harbour the weather forecast suggests that at least six hours could be lopped off the record time for the 628 nautical mile course. And, much to the delight of the crews aboard all 89 yachts in the fleet, the southerly change forecast for the first night will not be as strong or adverse as originally predicted. The outlook is for a 15-knot north-easterly wind for the start then near 30 knots from the same direction for the spinnaker…

While the weather forecast for the start of the Rolex Sydney Hobart on Boxing Day suggests it will be “a typical Hobart”, where fast downwind will be brought to an abrupt halt by a stiff southerly change, the bigger picture leaves little doubt supermaxi Wild Oats XI’s race record time for the 628 nautical mile classic could be lowered by some three hours, possibly more. In 2012 the 30-metre long “silver bullet”, owned by the Oatley family and skippered by Mark Richards, posted a race record time of 1 day, 18 hours, 23 minutes and 12 seconds. The current weather outlook for the start is for a fast run south from Sydney on the face of a 25 to 35…