Wild Oats XI has lived up to its pre-race expectations and sailed into the history books just after 9.30am on Sunday morning, winning her fourth straight Sydney to Hobart Race.
Wild Oats elapsed time was 1 day, 20 hours, 34 minutes and 14 seconds.
In 15 knots of north nor'east breeze and with a sizeable spectator fleet escort, the mighty Sydney-based 30m maxi owned by Bob Oatley and skippered by Mark Richards arrived in first place in the 628 nautical mile ocean classic.
Skandia finished in second place one hour and seven minutes behind the winners.
Wild Oats XI overcame a number of setbacks including a torn spinnaker soon after the start on Sydney Harbour on Friday, a too-close encounter with a shark on Saturday night that could have caused serious damage to their rudders and Saturday's valiant fight back by Skandia to lead Wild Oats XI for most of the day.
"We had a really tough race, and the first three quarters of it we were behind Skandia," Richards said.
"There were times when Skandia was just sailing away from us, which we hadn't seen before. We didn't think we were sailing as fast as usual. We didn't achieve our target speeds and Skandia was sailing very well. He (Grant Wharington, Skandia's skipper) was sailing the shifts nicely and getting into the weather."
"When we left Sydney Heads we were pretty confident we got something wrapped around the keel."
"We couldn't see it but the boat was sailing like an absolute dog for 24 hours. We couldn't get out of our own way."
"Then around 4pm on Saturday we wrapped a shark around our rudder. We couldn't get rid of it so we ended up backing off and going backwards to clear the shark."
"All of a sudden Wild Oats XI was back to her old self and we took off. We were going faster and within a half hour we were ahead of Skandia."
The record for the most line honours wins in the race is held by Morna/Kurrewa IV, the same boat which sailed to seven line honours victories under two different owners and two different names, the last time in 1960 as Kurrewa IV.
Wild Oats XI is also the current record holder with a time of 1 day 18 hours 40 minutes 10 seconds set in 2005 when she took her first line honours win having only been on the water a matter of weeks.
"When it's your own record it doesn't matter at all. We had one goal and that was to get here first. If you want to beat that record you want to smash it," Richards said.
Wild Oats XI's finish times
2005 (record) 1:18:40:10
2006 2:08:52:33
2007 1:21:24:32
2008 1:20:34:14