HOBART (AUS) - First National Real Estate (First 40.7) geschipperd door Michael Spies is tot voorlopige winnaar uitgeroepen in de twee meetsystemen IMS & IRC. Wanneer First National Real Estate deze ochtend om 5u32 locale tijd de finishlijn passeerde was er nog maar 1 deelnemer die kans had om hen te verslaan na verbeterde tijd.
De overwinning zal pas officieel worden wanneer alle deelnemers gefinisht zijn maar de wedstrijdleiding deelde mede dat ze niet meer te kloppen zijn.
Michael Spies de eigenaar beschrijft zijn overwinning met een zoet verhaal:
"This is up there with 1999. It’s hard to compare. With line honours only two or three boats can win, but on handicap twenty or thirty boats are a chance."
"Push the boat, keep her pointing to Hobart at 95% of her maximum speed, 100% of the time. We were tactically sound. We didn’t go out on any limbs. A couple of boats took a flyer here and a flyer there and they paid short dividends but then the next flyer they took came back to bite them.
"Yesterday we had 12 hours of hard spinnaker running and for six hours we were right on the edge. We knew we had to keep pushing it to stay with the boats we had to beat."
"We stopped for a couple of hours in Bass Strait when the wind died, and we thought we had lost it, but the rest of the fleet stopped too. We stopped again at Tasman Island and coming into Storm Bay but finally got an early morning breeze that carried us up the river".
"We’ve worked hard to get the rating down. If I listed all the changes we’ve made it would take a couple of foolscap pages".
foto: winnaar van de handycap trofeeën, First National Real Estate © Daniel Forster
Meer info en alle uitslagen:
www.rolexsydneyhobart.com
