With just hours to spare before the start of the 2024 Rolex Sydney to Hobart, racers have been given their final weather briefing – thunderstorms, three-and-a-half metre waves, erratic wind changes, and reduced visibility are all on the radar for the 628-nautical-mile race south.
While crews of the 104 competing yachts on the harbour will be blessed with blue skies and strengthening northeasterly winds that will help get racers on their way, a predicted trough set to arrive in the early hours of Friday morning will bring strong-to-gale-force southwesterly winds.
Favourable conditions will make way for a southwesterly change in the early hours of Friday morning. Credit: Mark Evans/Getty Images
“It’s certainly going to be fast and furious out there tonight,” said Master Lock Comanche co-skipper Matt Allen. “The boat speeds are going to be through the roof. I think we’ll be doing 30 to 40 knots through the water. It’s going to be a really tough night before we get into that front, which … will be quite good for the bigger boats.”
Racers were given the final briefing ahead of the 1pm start. The fastest boats are expected to hit the Bass Strait and the changing weather front around 1am on Friday.
“We are seeing strong wind warnings developing through the afternoon today and getting up to gale [force], so about 35 knots on the south coast of NSW, and further south towards Tasmania,” said Gabrielle Woodhouse, senior meteorologist for the NSW Bureau of Meteorology.
“It’s going to be fairly strong. It’s going to be very abrupt. There may be some gale winds associated with that change.
“We’re expecting winds on the Harbour to be getting up to about 15 knots at [race start], and once you get outside the heads, it looks as though we’ll be getting up to 18 to 20 knots by this afternoon [the BOM has predicted] winds speeds of 20 to 30 knots, and by the evening, what we can see, particularly south of about Narooma, is those wind speeds getting up to 35 knots.”
Grant Wharington, skipper of the 30-metre supermaxi Wild Thing 100, said: “It’s all about tonight. Keeping the boat together, keeping it going fast. Changing gears efficiently and just keeping in contact with the other guys. We’re not looking for any kind of magic. There are some excellent sailors out here, best in the world. So we’ve just got to stay in the same patch of water, and just do the best with our boat that we can.”
The key competitors for line honours are LawConnect, Wild Thing 100, and Master Lock Comanche.
James Mayo, co-skipper of Comanche, said that while crew safety and vessel maintenance were his top priorities, he had “one goal – I want to lock this up”.
“It’s going to be wild, and it’s going to be windy,” he added. “It’s about keeping this asset in one piece, and transitioning through that as best we can.”
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