Team Australia tackles Tasman
Rough first night for Sydney-Auckland record attempt"Looks like survival on the first night," said Team Australia skipper Sean Langman on the eve of their Sydney to Auckland record run (October 15).
Tomorrow's departure time is creeping forward for the giant ORMA 60 trimaran so the six-man crew can stack the weight aft and get a head start on the seaway due to build to 3-5m with the fresh north-west winds. An early afternoon exit from Sydney Heads is now being discussed.
"If they keep good pace Team Australia will hopefully be ahead of the biggest waves and should only have 2-3m waves to contend with," said Roger ‘Clouds’ Badham who is routing the attempt. "Slower and they will have more waves, faster and there will be less."
An earlier than planned departure from the harbour eases another concern for the crew, striking a whale or other large submerged sea creature or object at speed.
"If we get going in daylight we can get across the whale migration path off the east Australian coast," says Langman, who has come a cropper in ocean races with other boats.
It will be a record run of contrasts with the maximum breeze of NW winds 30-35 knots and gusts to 40 due midnight the first night, Wednesday 16th October. The nor’wester is forecast to ease back to the low 20s the next morning and to the mid-teens in the eastern part of the Tasman Sea, and unfortunately down to 7-10 kts on the east coast of New Zealand.
Langman says an ETA of three days is still realistic.
The 60-foot trimaran already holds the Sydney to Hobart passage record and other Northern Hemisphere records from its days as the French-owned
Team Australia is heading to NZ as one of the headline entries for the PIC Insurance Brokers Coastal Classic, the traditional spring icebreaker starting Friday October 25 off Auckland’s Devonport Wharf.
As a warm-up to the Coastal Classic, Langman and Simon Hull (TeamVodafone) have agreed to a separate promotional race on Wednesday 23rd in Auckland Harbour. The two ORMA 60 trimarans have been recently refashioned and this will be the one and only opportunity for the crews to scope each other prior to the start of the country’s biggest coastal race.
Team Australia’s sprint to Auckland can be tracked via a new dedicated website http://teamaus.net.au/
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