MARINE BUSINESS NEWS
NEWS UPDATE
29 December 2023
Publishers note
We do hope Christmas Day was good for all our readers. We also hope you have time to be on the water with family and friends over the coming weeks.
The weather has been surprising over the last few days. In some parts of our country, it has been so extreme that we have seen some very sad outcomes. It reminds us that we must remain alert about the weather, be weather-aware, and, if in doubt, don’t go out.
The Sydney to Hobart line honours have been decided. While the race time record wasn’t broken, the last minutes of the race were amazing to watch. It was only in the last minutes that a winner became obvious. Congratulations to LawConnect. They beat the defending champion and favorite Andoo Comanche by 51 seconds.
It’s the fourth time lucky for owner Christian Beck, who has been the runner-up for the past three years. The final finish time was 1 day, 19 hours, 3 minutes, and 58 seconds - more than 10 hours slower than the race record set by Comanche in 2017.
LawConnect was flying a protest flag on arrival. Sailing master Tony Mutter said the team has yet to discuss whether they will go through with it.
“We did notify the race committee that we were flying a protest flag... for an incident during the race that we thought affected our performance,” Mutter said. “We slowed down for half an hour… on standby for a boat we thought was in distress.”
Mutter confirmed the boat in question was Andoo Comanche but stressed they didn’t think it was intentional. “There was no intent on their part to create that problem... we’re not suggesting that at all,” he said.
The other interesting comments came from LawConnect skipper Christian Beck. “We thought we’d definitely lost it like 15 minutes before because they [Andoo Comanche] were three miles ahead of us,” Beck said.
“The boat, I jokingly call a shitbox, but compared to Comanche it honestly is a shitbox. I know it looks good on TV, but if you go up close to that boat, it’s as rough as anything, and Comanche is a beautiful boat that’s better in every way.”
Marine Business News is an Australian-owned marine industry news service publishing local and international news. If you have news stories you would like to share, please let us know by contacting our newsroom via our email at NewsRoom@MarineBusinessNews.com.au.
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Stay safe on the water,
Domenic Genua - Publisher
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