The first finishers of the grueling Sydney Hobart race are streaming into port. Favorite Wild Oats took second place line honors, two hours behind winner Alfa Romeo.
From the ISAF’s sailing.org
Mike Slade had an historical perspective of the close three-way battle of the maxis: “When Napoleon turned up at Waterloo he knew he was in for a bad day, he had a bad day at the office didn’t he? I’ve been a bit like that. It was a fantastic race and well done Alfa, bloody marvellous.”
Slade said that Leopard had gambled by sailing farther offshore than Alfa and Oats down the east coast of Australia rather than sailing in Alfa’s wake. “We went offshore because there was no point in covering Alfa’s tracks; she had about 20 miles on us and we just got locked out. We had about four shut-downs and it was as frustrating as hell. We sat there for hours, watching them go away. That cost us. We got punished.”
Rounding Tasman Island was the worst Slade had experienced. “There was no wind and appalling seas; really nasty because it’s a lee shore, you’ve got no steerage because there’s no wind, but the seas were huge and that took us a couple of hours.
