Sydney to Hobart protests dismissed

An international jury in Tasmania dismissed a protest by the organising race committee against Bob Oatley’s 100-foot Wild Oats and confirmed its fifth line honours win in six years of the Rolex Sydney to Hobart race. A similar protest against Britain’s 72-foot Rán, owned by Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom and skippered by Tim Powell, about a failure to meet a radio reporting schedule, was also dismissed.

But the mood was subdued by news for one of Rán’s senior crew members, Jeremy Robinson, that his father, David, a well-known sailmaker, had been killed in an avalanche when ski-ing.

VELUX 5 OCEANS race leader Brad Van Liew has was first though the first scoring gate on the second leg of the round the world yacht race. Over the last 24 hours the American has been surfing his 60 -foot Le Pingouin at an average of around 12 knots, the fastest in the five-boat fleet, on his way from Cape Town to Wellington, New Zealand