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SYDNEY - Maximus owner Bill Buckley hopes it's a case of third time lucky next year after a "catastrophic failure" forced his fancied maxi out of this year's Sydney to Hobart yacht race.
New Zealander Buckley withdrew his 30m yacht from the race yesterday after he examined the damage to its keel, which it suffered on Sunday on its way to Sydney.
It was another setback for Buckley after last year's crack at the race ended early when Maximus lost her wing mast on its first morning at sea.
The boat arrived in the early hours of the morning and engineer Buckley only needed a quick inspection of the damaged keel after the boat was lifted up at Woolwich dock yesterday.
He had been more optimistic about the boat's prospects prior to the inspection, but felt "gutted" after the inspection.
Neither Buckley or helmsman Ross Field was sure how the damage was done.
"We don't know yet whether we hit anything out there, we definitely heard a bang," Buckley said.
"But it could have been the crashing, it could have been hitting an animal or something."
Buckley said it would have taken about a month and between A$50,000 ($56,660) and A$100,000 ($113,320) to install a new keel.
"We'll design a new keel and make sure we don't miss any calculations out that we may have missed out this time," Buckley said.
"We'll try again next year, if we can make it, but I thought we were prepared this year and obviously this has let us down.
"But I couldn't see anything that would have let us down in the race. I'm sure it was quite capable of matching any boat out there."
Buckley stressed he hadn't lost faith in canting keels.
"I definitely think we should never give up on the canting keels, they make the boat so much nicer to ride and to handle and if we didn't move forward in technology, we would never have reached the moon or anything else," Buckley said.
"You've got to push the envelope. It's an enjoyable boat to sail in and it sails really nicely when it's going well.
"The keel did two full seasons of quite heavy racing and we didn't have one failure with it."
Asked about the extent of the damage, Buckley said he saw cracks on both sides of the boat and had to try to get his head around a repair job that would have been good enough to meet the race standards.
"It can't be just welded and repaired, I just think its beyond that," said Buckley, who felt money as much as time was the major issue in organising a replacement.
The boat arrived in Sydney under escort from the Water Police and Buckley said he had been worried about it until it reached the dock.
"We could have lost the boat quite easily, we took all the precautions, we put the life belts out and the boats out and everybody was wearing life jackets," he said.
- AAP
