Wild Thing something of a wild card

At about $1.50, the bookies are ranking  Wild Oats XI firm line honours favourite in this 2012 Rolex Sydney Hobart; then they have Ragamuffin-Loyal at $3.25 and Lahana at $10 -- and finally you get to Grant (Wharo) Wharington’s Wild Thing, at $13.

Pretty generous odds considering the punters, the bookies, Wild Thing’s rivals, not even Wharington himself knows just how fast his new-look super maxi is.

The black-hulled 100 footer truly is the dark horse in the dash to Hobart.

Since last year, there have been massive changes to Wild Thing, including a completely new back end. The last nine and a half metres of the formerly 98-foot super maxi have been chopped off and a new 10-metre stern glued on, bringing the hull length up to 100 feet and widening the stern so that the sides now run parallel from the widest point new the mast.

A new underwater shape, plus the crew can now get their weight right aft when the big boat is planing on a broad reach. There is also all new titanium standing rigging and a completely new wardrobe of sails.

"There’s not much of the original boat now," Wharington says. "We’ve kept the 6.8-metre deep keel we put on in 2009 (originally Wild Thing’s keel was a modest 4.8 metres, lengthened to 5.2 in 2005). She’s better now than when she was brand new; when she won line honours in 2003."

Of course her rivals are getting faster too. Each winter, yachties tinker with their boats. It fills in those short, windless winter days and super maxi owners have the resources to tinker more than most.

Wild Oats XI and Ragamuffin/Loyal deserve their short odds, but they will have to wait until the first afternoon, as they storm past Wollongong and Jervis Bay towards Green Cape, before they know whether the bookies have got it right about Wharo.