KEY POINTS:
Wild Oats 11 made a scintillating start to her bid for a third consecutive Sydney to Hobart line honours yacht title.
The New South Wales maxi led the fleet out of Sydney and maintained an advantage over the other two maxis, Britain's City Index Leopard and Victoria's 2003 line honours winner Skandia.
All three boats were expected to find it hard to maintain the early pace, if the weather forecast proves accurate.
Wild Oats 11 skipper Mark Richards said before the start that breaking his boat's existing record of one day 18 hours 40 minutes 10 seconds set in 2005 was still achievable, even with the current forecast.
"A lot of this wind direction is pointing us in a straight line to Hobart, which we didn't have in 2005," Richards said. "These boats in nine, 10 knots of breeze can be doing 16, 17 knots in a straight line, so that's plenty fast enough to break the record, so we'll see."
While Wild Oats 11 maintained her lead as the fleet surged down the NSW south coast, a grand battle was developing for second spot.
City Index Leopard held that position for most of the early running, although Skandia slipped into second late in the afternoon. The three maxis quickly broke away from their smaller rivals in the 82-boat fleet.
Before the start, Cruising Yacht Club of Australia commodore and Ichi Ban skipper Matt Allen predicted some "champagne sailing conditions for those people who avoid the parking lots down there".
The race started under northeasterly breezes of 10 to 12 knots and freshened to about 18 knots from the north and northeast.
Limit, one of the early favourites for handicap honours, started 17min 38sec late after skipper Alan Brierty's flight from Perth was delayed.
Several boats on the second start line were caught out by an ebb tide and 12 broke the start. Among them was the fleet's smallest boat, the 9.99m Palandri Wines Mind's Eye,
The yacht was looking for redress from the race committee at the finish after it took some time to respond to a call to turn back after confusion over which sail number had been called out. Aurora did not respond to the race committee's call to turn back.
- AAP
