andoo comanche yacht

Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2024

Andoo Comanche

John ‘Herman’ Winning Jr has chartered the Sydney Hobart record holder, Comanche . In their first hit out, Winning took Line Honours from Black Jack in the fluky 2022 Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race. She took Line Honours in just under 20 hours and won the inaugural 260nm Tollgate Islands Race. Herman has prefixed the boat’s name with ‘Andoo’ for Andoo Products, which partners with his Appliances Online. This is the boat to beat for Line Honours.

American Jim Clark and Aussie wife Kristy bought brand new Comanche for her first Rolex Sydney Hobart in 2014 and finished 49 mins behind Line Honours victor, Wild Oats XI , ahead of her Line Honours victory in 2015 after scoring Line Honours in the light and fluky 2015 Rolex Fastnet Race. She also smashed the 2225 nautical mile Transpac monohull record in 2017. Jim Cooney and Samantha Grant bought her just prior to the 2017 Rolex Sydney Hobart and as LDV Comanche , she took Line Honours and the race record after a protest against Wild Oats XI . In 2018, Comanche was pipped for second over the Rolex Sydney Hobart finish line by Black Jack after a race-long battle between the four 100-footers, won by Wild Oats XI . Cooney last took her to Hobart in 2019 and took Line Honours after doing the same in the 2019 Transpac Race.

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Andoo Comanche returns to victory in Sydney Hobart yacht race

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Andoo Comanche

Let’s tour the vplp / verdier maxi 100-footer with skipper john winning before the 2023 sydney hobart race..

One of the most well-known monohulls, originally built to win the Rolex Sydney Hobart on line honours (it was her first race in 2014), and to break records, now known as Andoo Comanche, under her current team, she is still breaking records, and is the current line honours holder for all major Blue Water Pointscore Races on the East Coast of Australia.

"The boat is what it is because it is built the best way, with the best tools and the best equipment, and so a big shout out to Harken for all their stuff. I can guarantee you when we have always gone out we are not looking to save money. Price is always what you pay, but value is what you get.”

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Andoo Comanche takes out Sydney to Hobart as supermaxi makes race history

Australian supermaxi Andoo Comanche secured a fourth line honours victory in the gruelling Sydney-Hobart ocean race Wednesday, but fell short of setting a new course record.

The 100-foot yacht, skippered by John Winning Jnr, triumphed in a nail-biting finish in the early hours of Wednesday after leading the blue water classic for much of the race.

It completed a quartet of line honours wins for the boat in the prestigious event since 2015 under a third different owner.

Andoo Comanche crossed with a time of one day, 11 hours, 56 minutes and 48 seconds -- about 20 minutes in front of rival supermaxi Law Connect -- and just under three hours short of its own record.

The current race record of one day, nine hours, 15 minutes and 24 seconds was set by the same Comanche boat under a different skipper in 2017.

Winning Jnr was part of the team that won the event in 2016, but said it was something special to skipper his own crew.

“To do it in a campaign that I was part of putting together is really quite exceptional,” he told national broadcaster ABC.

Last year’s defending champion Black Jack crossed third, followed by Wild Oats, which fell behind after tearing one of its sails earlier in the race.

The 109-strong racing fleet set off from a sun-splashed Sydney Harbour on Monday afternoon, charting their way through the 628-nautical mile course (1163km) to Hobart.

Favourable weather early in the race raised the prospect of toppling that mark, but the strong winds faded as the boats barrelled towards the finish line in Hobart.

The Bass Strait, which separates Tasmania from the mainland, can unleash perilous conditions.

A deep depression proved catastrophic for the fleet in 1998, when six sailors were killed and 55 more were rescued after five boats sank.

Race officials on Tuesday evening said only three of the starting fleet had been forced to retire so far.

One of them, 40-foot yacht Yeah Baby, withdrew less than four hours into the race after reportedly colliding with a massive sunfish.

Dozens of smaller yachts were still in the water Wednesday morning, competing for the handicap prize, which compensates for boat size.

READ BELOW FOR A FULL WRAP OF ALL THE ACTION FROM THE RACE!

Comanche held a consistent lead of 20 nautical miles throughout the afternoon as it moved towards the Derwent with LawConnect telling the Nine papers they expect to arrive at Constitution Dock in Hobart at around 2am AEDT.

As darkness neared, Wild Oats XI fell back into fourth having suffered sail damage overnight while reigning line honours winner Black Jack was third, some five nautical miles behind LawConnect.

FOLLOW THE LIVE RACE TRACKER HERE

Comanche led the fleet into Bass Strait in the early morning, but slipping well behind LDV Comanche’s race record from 2017. Three of the four supermaxis (100-plus-footers) ran well east of the rhumbline to take advantage of marginally stronger winds, before turning back towards the coast of Tasmania around midday.

There were two retirements on the first day, with two-hander Avalanche the first to pull back to shore with a damaged bowsprit after a collision with Llama II just outside the Sydney Heads. Llama II escaped with only superficial damage.

Yeah Baby then retired in the evening after sustaining rudder damage near Wollongong due to a collision with a sunfish, but returned safely to Sydney.

Koa then became the third retirement after breaking her rudder, and is set to be towed to Eden on the NSW south coast, leaving 106 yachts still in the race. Enterprise Next Generation put in a request for redress after helping their stricken rival.

WILD OATS COPS DAMAGE OVERNIGHT

Hamilton Island Wild Oats came within 0.3 nautical miles of Black Jack around 2am overnight in the hunt for third position, before Black Jack surged in the early morning.

The pair traded positions throughout the day, with Wild Oats taking a line significantly closer to rhumbline.

It followed a wild start where both Comanche and Wild Oats were forced to take penalty turns following a series of near-misses in Sydney Harbour (more below).

Wild Oats - hunting a record tenth line honours win - then suffered damage to one of their two largest sails overnight.

Their veteran crewman Chris Links told NewsLocal a seam across one of their large downwind sails split, requiring running repairs on deck.

“It is not an easy job,’’ Links said.

“It has a cable in it and we had to do the repair on deck.

“It took around one and a half hours to repair.’’

LIVE STREAM

Watch live on-board action from LawConnect below.

WILD START CAUSES CHAOS

“Protest, get the flag up, that was f***ing bull***t,” someone yelled on Andoo Comanche in the first two minutes after being cut off by rival supermaxis LawConnect and Black Jack.

URM and LawConnect were also “inches” away from crashing into each other, according to URM skipper Ashley-Jones.

Less than a minute later, one of the crew was heard barking: “you’re asking for a clusterf***, we’re going to be in a collision,” and labelled one rival a “f***ing idiot”.

Comanche hit a turning mark as it exited the heads and was later spotted flying a protest flag of their own, after another boat protested them.

On Wild Oats, which took two penalty turns, skipper Mark Richards could be heard yelling “furl, furl, we are going to do a 720 (penalty turn)”.

Wild Oats famously lost the win in 2017 upon arrival in Hobart, after being handed a one-hour penalty for a rule breach over an incident with Comanche.

That race saw the record time set, with 2022’s Comanche roughly eight nautical miles behind the 2017 edition’s pace late on Monday night and falling further back overnight.

EARLY RACE UPDATES AND PREVIEW (via AFP)

More than 100 yachts set sail Monday on the Sydney-Hobart race as favourable winds raised hopes for a record time in one of the world’s most punishing ocean events.

Fans gathered at coastal vantage points and on spectator boats in a sun-splashed Sydney Harbour, which hours earlier had been shrouded in a thick fog that halted all ferry traffic.

The starting cannon fired to release 109 yachts on the 628-nautical mile (1,200-kilometre) blue water classic.

Crews dashed to get out of the city’s harbour on the first leg of the race down Australia’s eastern coast and across the treacherous Bass Strait towards the finish line in the Tasmanian state capital.

A final weather briefing on race day predicted “fresh to strong” north to northeasterly winds in the next day or so, giving the fastest, 100-foot supermaxi yachts a chance to challenge Comanche’s 2017 record of one day, 9 hours, 15min and 24sec.

Mark Richards, skipper of nine-time line honours-winning supermaxi Wild Oats, said his crew was buoyant after preparing for exactly these conditions.

“We put all our eggs in one basket and we put all our money on black for a downwind forecast and we have ended up getting it,” he told public broadcaster ABC.

“I think Wild Oats is going to be very fast,” Richards added. “The world is going to find out who is the fastest boat downwind.”

Wild Oats is competing for line honours against three rival supermaxis: Andoo Comanche, last year’s line honours winner Black Jack, and LawConnect.

Weather is a critical factor in the race, which was first held in 1945. Though the supermaxis are expected to be powered by northerly winds to a quick finish as early as Tuesday, slower mid- to small-sized boats will still be in the water in the following days facing possible gales and changes in wind direction.

In 1998, when a deep depression exploded over the fleet in the Bass Strait, six men died, five boats sank and 55 sailors were rescued.

Black Jack took line honours last year after a tight tussle with LawConnect, ending years of frustrating near misses to cross the finish line on the River Derwent after two days, 12 hours, 37min and 17sec.

Ichi Ban, which is not racing this year, was the 2021 winner of the overall handicap prize, which takes into account the yachts’ sizes. The boat pipped rival Celestial in a race where dangerous waves and weather conditions saw many withdraw.

International boats are making a return after the race was cancelled in 2020 for the first time due to the pandemic, and Covid hit the fleet last year.

Entrants come from Germany (Orione), Hong Kong (Antipodes), Hungary (Cassiopeia 68), New Caledonia (Eye Candy and Poulpito), New Zealand (Caro), Britain (Sunrise) and the United States (Warrior Won).

Sunrise is a proven ocean racer, winning the 2021 Fastnet Race in Britain, while Caro has been tipped to take out overall handicap honours, although skipper Max Klink played down his prospects ahead of the race saying: “I do not think we are the favourite.”

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Andoo Comanche wins Line Honours in the 2023 Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race

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Andoo Comanche set for Sydney to Hobart line honours defence but skipper aware of recent challenges

Topic: Sport

Andoo Comanche won line honours in the Sydney to Hobart last December, but an incident earlier this year left two crew in hospital.  ( Getty Images: Corbis/Steve Christo )

Andoo Comanche's crew are vowing to stay on their toes as they defend their Sydney to Hobart line honours title, lest they repeat a serious crash that sent two sailors to hospital.

Comanche has blitzed through preparations for this year's Hobart, where she will be one of four 100-foot (30.5-metre) supermaxis jostling to reach Constitution Dock the quickest.

Comanche holds the line-honours record and is arguably the fastest monohull in the world, crossing the line first at all four events of this year's Sydney Blue Water Pointscore Series thus far.

But Comanche's strength, her unmatched power, can be her greatest weakness, a point reiterated to skipper John Winning Jr and his crew earlier this year.

Sailing offshore near the site of another recent line honours victory, the Brisbane to Hamilton Island, the boat ran aground under motor.

Comanche only briefly scraped the bottom of her hull in the shallow water, but it was enough to send a jolt across the huge vessel.

The impact sent crew member Phil Jameson careering into the companionway, landing head-first and cracking his skull open.

"He was unconscious," Winning said.

"He doesn't have any recollections of the hours in between but we were having conversations with him and he doesn't remember any of that."

Fellow crew member Julien Cressant suffered a leg injury so painful he was struggling to walk.

"A couple of really good men got seriously injured, and they're probably two of the toughest blokes on the boat," Winning said.

"It shows you the tiniest thing on this thing, with the loads and the size and the weight of it, it can really hurt you if you get something wrong, and it did."

Both men have since recovered and are committed to joining Winning aboard Comanche from December 26.

"It's a good warning sign for us to always be on our toes," Winning said.

"The same thing can happen if you do anything wrong. It will come back and bite, you this boat. It's not forgiving."

Winning and his crew will spend the next month preparing for and contesting the Cabbage Tree Island race and Big Boat Challenge, as well as ironing out any remaining issues with their boat.

Winning is remaining alert to any mechanical issues after the engine and hydraulics failed during the Bird Island Race earlier this month.

"It was over an hour, maybe two or three hours, before they got it fixed," Winning said.

"We still won the race on line honours but we were lucky there were no other 100 footers or we might've had a bit on our hands to win that.

"The fact that in the last race we had a major problem is a little concerning.

"There's still a long way to go [until the Sydney to Hobart race] but we want to know what our back-up plans are for those situations."

It would be a brave punter who bet against Comanche once those issues were ironed out.

Winning is confident that in the right conditions, his team can break the line honours record — 1 day, 9 hours and 15 minutes — Comanche set in 2017.

"We want it windy, aiming at the finish line and as flat as possible on the water and as downwind as possible," Winning said.

"If we got the same conditions as 2017, we would like to think that as a crew, with the fact we've got new sail packaging and everything, we're every shot in beating that record."

The ABC of SPORT