Ichi Ban clinches second

Skandia pipped at the post in Rolex Sydney Hobart

It was only a matter of time. After the canting keel Skandia broke her one and only daggerboard on Wednesday afternoon (Aussie time) so this afternoon approaching Tasman Island at the southeast corner of Tasmania, so Grant Wharington found him super maxi being overtaken by his old Volvo Open 70 steed, now Matt Allen's Ichi Banas they crossed tacks.

"We were just really grinding them down reasonably quickly," commented a jubilant Allen on his arrival. "They were probably going as fast through the water earlier on but then they had to shorten sail because they were trying to keep their keel down to give them some lateral resistance and so as they kept their sails down to a minimum, the breeze got up to 27-28 knots and we just had a no2 and one reef and we just ground them out upwind."

Understandably Skandia skipper Grant Wharington described this incident in more colourful terms. " Ichi Ban was with us all day today. They went from being 12 miles behind us to them just sailing past us like we were going backwards, like we were sailing a 40 footer! We had a no4 jib on, almost like a storm jib, and a reef in the main and they had full mainsail and a full sized jib and they just went past us like we were sailing in a beach ball. Yendys or a 50 footer would have been faster than us today. We were 1.5-2 knots slower and 10 degrees lower. Anyway at least we were still out there."

As they bore away round the south side of Tasman Island so Ichi Ban was around 7 miles ahead and once Skandia rounded the famous 'organ pipes' at Cape Raoul so cracked off and with no board needed they were able to regain some ground crossing Storm Bay and up the Derwent river, despite the wind slowly dropping off. "The wind just held in long enough," said Wharington. "We came back at them a lot. We finished less than two miles behind them. Once we were going downwind again and didn’t need the board we were fine."

Allen was over the moon about his team's second place on the water, something he had never conceived when they left Sydney on Boxing Day. "We are really happy. Wild Oats sailed really well again, but we are really happy how close we were to her. All eyes are now on the weather to see how the whole handicap situation plays out. There is a fair bit of breeze out there, so they are probably going to come home reasonably quickly, but a lot of it is still on the wind all the way to Tasman Island, so we see how it pans out."

Wharington was pleased to have finished albeit frustrated by his board/canard situation. "It is going to be a pretty tough crossing, but it is always about keeping on going. It is not necessarily about the result in this race. You have got to finish the race and get there in one piece and okay we didn’t quite get there in one piece, but they [ Wild Oats] could have done something as well. They could have hit something and broken their front rudder and it could have been the same problem. Obviously it is really disappointing but we know that it’s those sort of things that wreck your day."

He was happy with the modifications he has made recently to the boat such as the square top mainsail and Skandia's new stern. "The boat is fantastic. It is in really good shape now and it is a very very competitive boat. We just have to eliminate things that go wrong and we’ll be here again."

Aside from the broken board Wharington reckons they are fairly competitive with Wild Oats XI. "We wouldn’t change much at all," he said as to what he would have to do to take on the Oatley super maxi. "The boat is pretty competitive now. Obviously we were a little rushed getting our rating there, quite late and with our new square topped mainsail we got penalised quite heavily. But that was really fast. The sails are really good. The modifications we’ve made to the boat are good. I think we can match it with those guys in a lot of conditions. It is a three year newer design so it is always hard to beat, but they won’t be around forever.

"I suppose we’ve finished here not much outside the old record and we’ve been upwind the whole way and we put a spinnaker on for the first time about four miles from the finish line. We did talk last week about rating for the race with no spinnakers at all and we certainly would have saved about 40 points and would have been quite competitive actually! In terms of the race, it wasn’t really a tough race, but every race is challenging."

Wharington is still in the dark as to exactly why Skandia's daggerboard broke. He doesn't think they hit anything. "We were quite heeled at the time, maybe 30 degrees and we slid sideways off a wave and just thumped down into a trough and it was just overloaded. Normally we’d trying to pull it about half way up in those conditions and we couldn’t get it up because we were going so fast. The waves were getting quite big and we probably would have had to do a little head to wind to try and get it up and that would have been pretty tough because we were going so quick and the waves were starting to get steep. SO it was better to just track along and we thought it would be strong enough. And we’ve taken a lot of lead off the keel this year. So it is loaded less than it was last time we sailed upwind in 30 knots. But not quite strong enough for Bass Strait..."

Next boat due into Hobart is Geoff Ross' new Yendys.