Nine hundred nautical miles of east-coast offshore racing in six weeks. Two races, one long road north.
From Sydney Harbour up the NSW coast and into Queensland. The race tracks roughly parallel to land but you can play the East Australian Current — three knots of southerly flow you have to either fight or hide from — and the trade-wind influence further north. It's the first real offshore of the season and the first time Alliance gets pushed for more than 24 hours.
The strategic question is simple to ask and brutal to answer: how far offshore do you go? Stay inshore and you avoid the worst of the current but cop the headlands. Go offshore and you ride the favourable side of the breeze but add miles. We'll be modelling it the whole way up.
Six days after we tie up in Surfers, we cast off again — this time heading further north into tropical Queensland. The race takes us up the Sunshine Coast, past Fraser Island, and out wide to skirt the Capricorn Coast. Longer, hotter, and run in trade-wind conditions that are usually steadier but never quite predictable.
This one is the proving ground. If we can do Sydney → Gold Coast → Mackay back-to-back without breaking ourselves or the boat, we know we're on the right shape of preparation for what comes after.
Tracks, results, what worked, what we'd do differently. Photos from the chase boats. The honest version.
