Bob Oatley's Wild Oats X is  tonight hanging on to the lead in the Audi Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race with a 15 mile break on Matt Allen's Ichi Ban and Steven David's Wild Joe which are tussling for second place.

Amongst the lead pack, Wild Joe is the furthest out to sea and a short time ago they were clocking 20 knots of boat speed.

Just before  the 2205 position report, the fleet was making good time in a 25-30 knot west sou'wester with Andrew Short on board ASM Brindabella reporting they were travelling “in the right direction” doing 13-18 knots of boat speed.

“We are just inside the continental shelf and we've just hooked into a heap of breeze,” said Short this evening as they past Port Stephens. He also reported a 5 knot east west current offshore. With the spinnaker still up from the start, all on board were comfortable he advised however if the breeze builds another three knots tonight, Short anticipates dropping the chute as its their only heavy air spinnaker.

By morning ASM Brindabella is expecting to be amongst the top five in the now 71 boat fleet following the retirement of James Connell's Zephyr with a broken backstay. Their ETA into Sydney is 7am Sunday morning. All on board are OK.

Based on current speeds, the first boat should cross the finish line off Southport's Main Beach on Sunday night, well outside record time.

Wild Oats X was the line honours winner of this annual race in 2005.

Five of the 71 boats racing in the Audi Sydney Gold Coast will pass through the finish line at Southport and continue on, without stopping, to Mackay as entrants in the Audi Sydney Mackay Yacht Race.

Each competing yacht has been fitted with a tracking device and can be monitored constantly via Yacht Tracker on the official race web sites http://goldcoast.cyca.com.au and http://mackay.cyca.com.au