American super-yacht Comanche retook the lead from fellow US challenger Rambler in the Sydney to Hobart on Sunday, as more damaged boats retired from the gruelling race off Australia's east coast, officials said.

Strong winds knocked out some 20 percent of the field on Saturday and Sunday -- including defending champion and eight-time line honours winners Wild Oats XI -- whittling the 108-strong fleet that set sail from Sydney Harbour on Boxing Day down to 85.

The retirement of Wild Oats XI -- which holds the race record of one day, 18 hours, 23 minutes and 12 seconds set in 2012 -- left the race in the hands of US challengers Comanche and Rambler 88, with just two nautical miles separating the pair.

Comanche, owned by Netscape founder Jim Clark and wife Kristy Hinze and one of the four 100-foot supermaxis that entered the 628-nautical-mile (1,163-kilometre) blue water classic, led the race for line honours after bolting out of Sydney Harbour.

But the crew had to work hard to repair a damaged daggerboard and rudder before entering the Bass Strait chasing Rambler Sunday morning and resuming the lead, organisers the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia (CYCA) said.

Rambler also suffered damage, to its starboard daggerboard, after hitting an unknown object and warned it was a "serious structural problem impeding our boat speed".
"We have no idea what we hit, we couldn't see it," Rambler's Australian navigator Andrew Cape said.

"It might have been marine life or flotsam, but it was a solid hit. It shook the boat.

"Our port tack performance has been badly affected, and it is all upwind to Tasman Island, so we have a lot of pain to come."

Chasing the two yachts are Australian contender Ragamuffin 100 and Italy's Maserati.

"We decided to punch on through. We think we can get to Hobart safely," Comanche's accomplished American skipper Ken Read said.
"I don't care if we limp over the line. We are going to finish this damned race."

It is just the second Sydney to Hobart for Comanche, which set a new 24-hour monohull record of 618.01 nautical miles in July, months after finishing runner-up in line honours at last year's contest.

- 'Lighter conditions ahead' -

Despite Comanche's lead, organisers said milder conditions could favour Rambler later Sunday.

"On paper, the much lighter conditions expected in the bottom half of Bass Strait and along the Tasmanian coast later this afternoon and tonight favour the less beamy Rambler," the CYCA said.

Both American boats had battled strong southerly winds that hit the race, where sailors faced 25-30 knot winds and big gusts against a south flowing current.

Wild Oats XI captain Mark Richards said the conditions were "tricky" but not the worst he had ever experienced.

"Forty knots of breeze, very dark at night," Richards told reporters as his supermaxi and crew returned to Sydney on Sunday morning.

"A few things went wrong for us, when that happens, snowball effect, then it started to go real bad.

"We lost the main engine of the boat so it was all over," he said, adding that the yacht's Aus$200,000 (US$146,000) mainsail was "trashed".

Other retirements on Saturday included line honours contender supermaxi Perpetual Loyal and Ark323, one of two Chinese entries and one of 27 foreign boats in the race.

Storms are not unknown to the race, with six people dying, five boats sinking and 55 sailors rescued on a fatal night in 1998 when a deep depression exploded over the fleet in the treacherous Bass Strait.

The first boats not expected to cross the finish line until Monday.
Source: AFP