Ichi Ban the one to beat on corrected time

• NEWS
• 29 Dec, 2006 08:07:00 AM

Ichi Ban the one to beat on corrected time

Matt Allen’s two-year plan to win the 2006 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht race with a yacht designed to compete in the last Volvo Ocean Race round the world may come to fruition.

Matt Allen’s two-year plan to win the 2006 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht race with a yacht designed to compete in the last Volvo Ocean Race round the world may come to fruition.

Allen’s Ichi Ban crossed the finish line in second place at 1.42 am today to set itself up as the boat to beat on corrected time and to win the most coveted trophy of the race, the Tattersalls Cup, given to the boat that sails closest to its ultimate ability.

Ichi Ban was almost four hours behind line honours winner Wild Oats XI, which became the sixth boat and the first since Astor in 1964 to win back-to-back line honours in the Rolex Sydney Hobart.

Allen had the Don Jones designed boat built at the beginning of 2005 to the new Volvo 70 formula developed for the 2005/6 Volvo Ocean Race under the stewardship  of the Volvo race chief executive officer, Australian Glenn Bourke.

“My intention in having the boat built was always with the 2006 Rolex Sydney Hobart in mind,” Allen said this morning.

“I believed the design was ideally suited to this race.”

Allen chartered the new boat to Grant Wharington, owner/skipper of the maxi Skandia for the Volvo Ocean Race, racing under the name Brunel.  Its Volvo Ocean Race campaign was beset by problems caused by underfunding which meant the boat did not compete in all legs of the race.

After the Volvo race, the boat reverted to Allen and it became his latest incarnation of Ichi Ban, the Japanese term for “number one”.

Yesterday Ichi Ban chased down Wharington’s Skandia on the Tasmanian coast, the maxi handicapped by a missing centreboard forward of the keel that was designed to reduce its leeway, slipping sideways because of the effect of the wind on the sails.

Ichi Ban overtook Skandia just before rounding Tasman Island and crossed the finish line 16 minutes ahead.

Current corrected time projections by the race organisers have Ichi Ban in sixth position but those ahead of it have still to cross the line and face lighter breezes off the Tasmanian coast.

However, the wind direction will be more favourable, east tending north-east, before the turning mark at Tasman.

The current leader on corrected time is Lindsay May’s Love and War, the timber boat that the late Peter Kurts took to overall race honours in 1974 and 1978.

Second is Bacardi, doing its 22nd Rolex Sydney Hobart with co-owner John Williams and his three sons aboard.

Leader in the Performance Handicap section is Damian Suckling’s Another Fiasco.

There are still 66 yachts at sea.

For further information on the 2006 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race and to follow the fleet on ‘Yacht Tracker’ visit www.rolexsydneyhobart.com