Nicknamed “the aircraft carrier,” it’s a monster yacht designed to break ocean records — but on this occasion the crew of Comanche was relieved just to reach the finish line.
The 100-foot supermaxi became the first American entry to win line honors at the prestigious Rolex Sydney to Hobart race since 1998 when it limped into port Monday night Australian time, having suffered significant damage en route.
“This is a hard race. I have sailed around the world two and a half times and I thought I had seen it all, but this is one hard body of water,” victorious skipper Ken Read told the race website.
“The people who have done this race 25 times, God bless them, they are the hardest people on Earth or the dumbest people on Earth — probably a combination of the two.”
Comanche briefly retired at one stage after suffering a damaged daggerboard, and cutting it loose had the effect of breaking the boat’s steering system. The race website reported it actually went backwards 30 nautical miles.
“We saved the hull but kind of cleaned out the rudder on the way through,” said Read, one of the world’s greatest yachtsmen.
“That’s when we said we’re done. We stopped and took all the sails down. We actually started kind of drifting back towards Sydney.
“And then all of a sudden I see the tools come out, and when I see the tools come out with these guys that’s usually a good sign that they have an idea.”
At that stage, Rambler — an 88-footer owned by American businessman George David — was leading the race, though it would also suffer damage to its daggerboard.
The patched-up Comanche capitalized. “We went from, ‘Let’s just finish,’ to ‘Holy crap, we might win this thing,'” Read said.
Comanche, representing the New York Yacht Club, covered the race’s 628 nautical miles (nm) in two days, eight hours, 58 minutes and 30 seconds.
By comparison, when it won line honors at this year’s Transatlantic Race from Newport, Rhode Island to England, Comanche set a new 24-hour sailing record for a monohull of 618.01 nm.
The Sydney-Hobart record is one day, 18 hours, 23 minutes and 12 seconds, set by Wild Oats XI.
Australia’s eight-time line honors champion was unable to defend its title in the 71st edition of the race, being forced out on Saturday after tearing a mainsail.
It was one of more than 30 of the 108 entries to have pulled out by Monday morning local time.
Comanche’s victory was the first by a female co-owner, with Kristy Hinze-Clark on board for the race and met by her husband Jim at the finish in Tasmania.
“I did not quite know what was going on,” Jim Clark said. “First I was told they retired and then that they were racing on.
“Until we came alongside the boat I wasn’t fully aware of exactly what had gone on. It was my first real indication of just what had happened.”
The Texas tech billionaire, a co-founder of Netscape, was beaten to line honors in his first attempt at the race last year, losing to Wild Oats by just 49 minutes.
But the 71-year-old has had great success in 2015, also winning the Rolex Fastnet, the 2,800 nm Transatlantic Race, and the 185 nm Stamford to Block Island Race in the U.S.
Clark married former model Kristy Hinze in 2009. The 36-year-old Australian was part of a crew including two-time America’s Cup winner James Spithill.
When Comanche came to its destination in calm conditions at the River Derwent at 9:58 p.m. local time, Rambler was fighting off Australian yacht Ragamuffin in the battle for second place.
“It’s an amazing boat built to break records and win these sorts of races,” CNN’s MainSail presenter Shirley Robertson reported from Hobart.
“It’s unlike any monohull you’ve ever since — it’s the fastest monohull on the planet. It came to Sydney last year and it did do the race, but it was brand new out of the box and was narrowly pipped at the post and finished second.
“Jim Clark is not a man who likes to be beaten. They’ve had a year of great success all over the world and he came back for one reason, and that was to win. He even put his wife on the boat for her first offshore race — it was a baptism of fire but she was all smiles when she stepped on the docks and lifted that trophy.”
