The British yacht Hugo Boss was sailing comfortably in 7th line honours position this morning, 71 miles behind leader Wild Oats XI at the end of the first night of the Sydney Hobart. See previous news story here.

After their first night onboard the crew are happy to be lying up with the top of the fleet, and once a lavish dinner of freeze-dried spaghetti bolognaise, washed down with a selection of Sydney’s finest mineral waters was over, the off-watchers tried to get their heads down. “I missed this!” said skipper Alex Thomson who had had just one hour of sleep during the night. “The first night of any race is always the adrenal exciter and then things calm down a bit.
“We had some good wind – 12 knots from the east – and were a couple of miles ahead of Open66 Coogans Stores when the wind dropped and changed to a 4 knot north-easterly. We currently have a northerly blowing 12 knots which is pushing us along at 10 knots. Chris [Tibbs, meteorologist] says that the wind should slowly build during the day and then significantly thereafter.

“Hopefully we’ll get the conditions that we need to ramp her [Hugo Boss] up today, though it was satisfying to be cranking along faster than Konica Minolta at times in what are such light conditions for Hugo Boss!”
“The guys are really up for it! We’ve got 2 4-man watches and operate a 3[hour]-on 3[hour]-off system. I think the most sleep anyone got last night was 3 hours in total, and that was little baby Scottie [Scott Gray, 23-year old Scottish rigger] though I don’t know how he did it with that heat: it’s like a furnace down below!”

Nick Moloney said that he is thoroughly enjoying himself commenting: “It’s brilliant! It’s very different from my Open 60, Skandia. In the conditions we’ve had so far I feel that Hugo Boss is a bit faster. She’s a heavy boat and is maybe not quite so fine in the bow. It’s fascinating for me to see how another Open 60 sails.”

When asked how sailing with Nick Moloney was going, Alex laughed and said: “We’ve been listening to his stories all night. He is one funny guy! I think we’re going to have problems shutting him up. It makes us wonder who, or rather what, he talks to when he’s sailing solo…”

Hugo Boss is currently sailing with full main and spinnaker.