New Zealand’s super maxi Maximus, one of the favourites for line honours in this year’s Sydney to Hobart yacht race, has pulled out with a badly damaged keel.
Yesterday morning when the boat was sailing from Auckland the crew called a PAN PAN, after a diver had gone overboard and found the complex keel mechanism had been damaged. This morning the 30-metre maxi arrived in Sydney just after 4am escorted by a Trans Tasman freighter and a Sydney Water Police vessel.