Anthony Bell has unveiled the supermaxi he will sail in this year's Sydney to Hobart, and it is the boat that holds the race record.
The yacht, now called Tribeca Loyal, was until recently Comanche. It won line honours in last year's 80th edition and has taken line honours five times in all. Bell has bought it and will skipper it, Australian Associated Press reported.
The entry marks Bell's return to the race after roughly a decade away. He was first to Hobart in 2011 with Investec Loyal and again in 2016 with Perpetual Loyal, which set a race record of 1 day, 13 hours, 31 minutes and 20 seconds. That record has since been broken.
He is seeking the J.H. Illingworth Challenge Cup, awarded for line honours, for a third time.
Tom Slingsby, the Olympic gold medallist and America's Cup sailor, returns as sailing master. He said the boat "already owns the Sydney Hobart race record" and that in the right conditions it could break it "by a lot".
Slingsby describes himself as more of a short-course sailor than an ocean racer.
The crew is heavy on recognisable names. The celebrity deck hands include the former Wallaby and Rugby Australia chief executive Phil Waugh, and Bell said the crew contains 21 people who have represented Australia or won world surfing titles, Olympic gold medals, or Wallabies or rugby league honours, along with two winners of the TV Week Gold Logie.
The crew is raising money for the Humpty Dumpty Foundation, which funds medical equipment for Australian hospitals.
The fleet leaves Sydney Harbour on Boxing Day.
The sailing master's remark is worth taking at its word, because it settles the question of who the challenger is.
Records in this race are held by boats. Comanche set the mark. Comanche is now Tribeca Loyal. Tribeca Loyal is entered. The holder and the challenger are the same hull, repainted and renamed.
This newspaper has looked for a precedent and found the structure unfamiliar. In most sports the defending holder and the challenger arrive separately, and the organisers are able to seat them apart.
The Department of Unnecessary Research has worked through the available outcomes. If the boat is slower than its own record, the record stands and the boat keeps it. If it is faster, the record falls and the boat takes it. If it is exactly as fast, nothing happens twice.
Our analysts accept that the crew, the sails, the navigator and the weather will all be different, and that a yacht is not the same thing as a time. They note only that the time is filed under the hull.
Whatever happens on Boxing Day, the boat cannot lose the record. It can only be beaten by itself.