Sailing: Comanche grabs early lead after slow start in Sydney Hobart race

[December 26, 2019]    SYDNEY (Reuters) - InfoTrack was first out of the Sydney Heads but 2017 line honors winner Comanche shrugged off a poor start to grab an early lead in the Sydney Hobart yacht race on Thursday.

A blue sky greeted the fleet of 157 and InfoTrack led the pack at the 75th edition of the 630 nautical mile race.

Comanche was fifth out of the heads but by the time the yachts had reached Cronulla, the downwind superiority of the super-maxi, co-owned by Jim Cooney and Samantha Grant, was evident.

"Comanche has come into her own. She is leading and holding us off," InfoTrack's navigator Brad Kellett reported.

"We can’t do anything about Comanche. We will just sail to the best of our ability. The race is anyone's."

The start of the race was officially declared clear, with no boats breaking the start lines.

(Reporting by Stefica Nicol Bikes in Sydney; writing by Amlan Chakraborty; editing by Jason Neely)

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