Sydney Hobart - Wild Oats XI: Tough from here but it's a Hobart race

9:24 PM Sun 27 Dec 2009 GMT

'Rolex Sydney to Hobart 2009, Sydney 26/12/09

WILD OATS XI' Andrea Francolini &copy

As the three supermaxis exited Bass Strait this morning the chance of Bob Oatley's Wild Oats XI claiming her fifth consecutive line honours in the Rolex Sydney Hobart race was looking increasingly difficult to achieve.

'It's going to be hard to catch Alfa Romeo from here,' said Wild Oats XI navigator, Adrienne Cahalan, 'but we can't lose sight of the fact that it is a Hobart race, and as we have seen before, anything can happen.'

Overnight, kiwi Neville Crichton continued to have his yacht, Alfa Romeo, harness favourable winds and maintain an advantage of around 20 nautical miles over second placed ICAP Leopard (Mike Slade, UK) and Wild Oats XI, which is being skippered by Mark Richards.

At 7.30am this morning these yachts were off the north east corner of Tasmania. The interesting point at that time was that Alfa Romeo was entering a transition zone in the weather system - where the wind was expected to change direction through 90 degrees from north-east to north-west - and had slowed to 14 knots, while Wild Oats XI and ICAP Leopard were power-reaching south at around 20 knots.

'The transition zone might make things interesting for us,' said Cahalan this morning. 'It could be quite tricky. But once we are through it we should get back up to high speeds. It certainly looks like it will be windy around Tasman Island and on Storm Bay later today.'

Cahalan also revealed that Wild Oats XI had a 'skirmish' with a sunfish overnight: 'It wrapped around the keel, so we had to stop the yacht and do a back-down [sail backwards] to clear it. We only lost a few minutes, and the good news is that the sunfish swam away.'

Current projections suggest the first yacht is not expected to cross the finish line in Hobart until early evening.

by Rob Mundle