Sailing-LawConnect wins again in Sydney to Hobart race marred by death of two sailors

SYDNEY - LawConnect took line honours at the Sydney to Hobart race for a second straight year early on Saturday in a race marred by the deaths of two sailors, the first loss of life in the prestigious ocean race since 1998.

Christian Beck's LawConnect, which finished the race in one day, 13 hours, 35 minutes and 13 seconds, was in second place in the early hours of Friday but moved into the lead when favourite Master Lock Comanche, which had set a record-breaking pace, retired due to mainsail damage.

LawConnect had finished the 2023 race by 51 seconds in a dramatic finish but this time the Supermaxi beat second-placed Celestial V70 with a healthy lead in the 628 nautical miles race.

Earlier, on Friday, organisers and local authorities said two experienced sailors were killed in separate incidents.

Race organisers said in a statement that both crew members died after they were suspected to have been hit by the sail boom, a horizontal pole which holds down the sails and swings depending on the direction of the wind.

They later said one of the sailors, Nick Smith from South Australia, has been hit by the boat's mainsheet and thrown across the boat, hitting his head on the winch.

Smith, 65, was a crew member of the Bowline, competing in the race for the fifth time.

A few hours later a crew member on the Flying Fish Arctos was struck by a sail boom and died. He was identified as Roy Quaden, 55, a sailor with two decades of experience from Western Australia.

"The sailing community is a very close community, and there's about a thousand sailors on the water in this race and to lose two in this fashion is just devastating," said David Jacobs, vice commodore at Cruising Yacht Club of Australia.

"We always want to improve safety wherever we can. So we will do an investigation and if there's something that boats can do to try and prevent this happening, we will implement it."

Bad weather has forced several boats to retire from the 79th running of the race, which began on Thursday.

The last loss of life in the race came in 1998 when five yachts were sunk and six sailors died after a major storm hit the fleet.

(Reporting by Praveen Menon and Jill Gralow, Additional reporting by Rohith Nair; Editing by Christian Radnedge, Peter Rutherford and Pritha Sarkar)