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Whisper rounding Tasman Island taken by Andrea Francolini.

David Griffith, skipper of Whisper writes, ‘The various 600+nm ocean races around the world are tough events.

Each group of boats (as per their IRC rating) generally sail in weather and current patterns that can be substantially different to the other groups due to boat speed.

The super maxis can take a route that is dramatically different to the rest of the fleet due to their much higher speed. They can sail a much longer track to stay in the favourable winds than the smaller boats. Often the next group (say 65-80ft) can hang on and use the same route.

The 50-65s may have to take another route as they will generally encounter different weather systems to the maxis after the first 18 hrs. The 30-50fts will definitely have much slower speed and tend to stay closer to the rhumb line.

The weather forecasts for this latest race indicated that this would be a race favouring the maxis and super maxis.

The weather gurus mapped out 3 possible tracks:

Track 1 was a very wide easterly route which would see the boats that could get out there and hang on, have a rocket ride on strong east and northeast winds all the way to Tasman Island. Thus, the group of 6 boats Andoo, Law Connect, Wild Thing, URM, Alive and Moneypenny were certain to take this route even though it was perhaps well over 150nm longer than the rumb line route.

Track 2 was a mid track, east of the rhumb line which was always going to be difficult due to many unstable weather cells passing through the track. The strong current patterns added to the difficulty of this route.

Track 3 was an inshore and rhumb line track that had many problems however generally safer for the smaller boats.

So, there was a huge dilemma for the 50-65 boats (Whisper is 62ft). To try and follow the super maxi route was not a possibility as the weather routing was showing a final 80nm upwind approach to Tasman Island in very strong (40+knot) winds from a long way east.

The group of No Limit, Whisper, Caro (recent winner of the Fastnet Race) and Celestial opted for the mid track. This turned out to be a most frustrating track after the first 24 hrs. We had many strong storm cells with dramatic lightning followed by lengthy periods of light winds and strong current (up to 3 knots) against us.

As it turned out the inner (rhumb line and west of the RL) track was strongly favoured. Smuggler and Highly Sprung took this route and did extremely well.

As our group of 50-65ftrs slowly converged towards the Tasmanian coast we were well out of contention for any honours in this race.

The larger mini maxis Alive, URM and Moneypenny who could take the most easterly route, behind the super maxis, sailed extremely well and charged home in great style consequently filling the podium. Our congratulations go to these wonderful competitors.

The routing for our track ended up being completely wrong - we arrived around 24 hrs behind the time the various models had predicted for us which was very frustrating.

We were lucky though, as the smaller boats who were 24 hrs behind us had to battle very strong southerly winds along the Tassie coast.

A very dramatic race with exciting battles for line honours and the Tattersalls Cup.

The Hobart hospitality always makes the end of the Great Race so memorable and keeps us coming back.'

See the full results