Comanche capitalised on favourable conditions to establish a handy lead in the early stages of the Sydney to Hobart race. Humming along at around 25 knots of boat speed, Comanche held a lead of around seven nautical miles over InfoTrack four hours into the race’s 75th edition.

Only around three miles separated InfoTrack and the other three supermaxis, Wild Oats XI, Black Jack and SHK Scallywag 100. With the boats pushed along by winds of around 25 knots, Comanche predictably prospered after she made a slow start in Sydney Harbour.

“We can’t do anything about Comanche that’s a well known fact, so we’ve just got to sail our boat to our best ability,” said InfoTrack navigator Brad Kellett, after she was the first boat to pass Sydney Heads. The other four supermaxis were doing their best to stay within a reasonable distance before the arrival of a forecast light southerly.

“Each of those maxis has its own particular preferred point of sail, at the moment Comanche is loving it,” Cruising Yacht Club of Australia commodore Paul Billingham said. “When it gets a little bit lighter, the narrower boats, the Black Jacks and Scallywags, they come into their own in those lighter conditions.”

Billingham said he was relieved there were no major incidents given the size of the fleet and the four starting lines, with no boats breaking early.

“We often have boats over the line and then get called back, we’ve occasionally had collisions,” he said. “We’ve been warning people all week you can’t win the race in the harbour but you can lose it. I think we saw a couple of penalty turns taken, that was probably port and starboard issues because obviously there was a lot of tacking going up the harbour.

“We’re delighted after all that planning and allocation of boats to their particular lines to have them clean away,” Billingham said. “The most amazing thing was we saw those five supermaxis having a tacking duel like they were little seven-metre match racing boats. It was just incredible, the way they were flinging them around.”

Kellett was not too excited about InfoTrack being first out of the Heads, recognising it was just the first short phase of a marathon race. “It’s always nice to get out of the Heads first and clean so the boys are all pretty happy but we’ve got a long way to go,” he said.