Five-time Sydney to Hobart-winning supermaxi Comanche will compete in the 2026 race with a new name, owner and crew after celebrity accountant Anthony Bell announced his return to the bluewater classic with an all-star operation led by sailing superstar Tom Slingsby.
Bell will compete in this year’s Sydney-Hobart a decade after his last appearance, in 2016, after purchasing Comanche – the current race record holder and last year’s winner – and relaunching her as Tribeca Loyal at the Deckhouse restaurant in Sydney’s affluent Harbourside suburb of Woolwich on Tuesday.
Bell won line honours in 2011 with Loyal and again in 2016 as Perpetual Loyal. That yacht was sold to LawConnect’s Christian Beck in 2017 and won back-to-back line honours in 2023 and 2024, and was second over the line behind Comanche last year.
Previously, Loyal had a reputation as the celebrity boat, raising money for the Humpty Dumpty Foundation, which provides sick children with lifesaving medical equipment.
TV personalities Karl Stefanovic and Larry Emdur, surfer Layne Beachley, and Rugby Australia chief executive Phil Waugh are among the big names to have worked their passage as crew members, and were on hand for Tuesday’s re-launch.
Waugh will return to the race again this year as a “super sailor” alongside Slingsby, one of Australia’s most decorated sailors, as sailing master. Slingsby has won an Olympic gold medal, the America’s Cup and three SailGP season titles as skipper of the Australian team.
Despite winning as skipper of Loyal in 2016, Slingsby isn’t an ocean racer (“it’s not something that I am good at and really want to do”) but said he couldn’t pass on the opportunity to return.
“This boat’s an amazing piece of engineering,” he said on Tuesday. “It’s known as the world’s best super maxi and for Anthony [Bell] to be able to acquire it and for all of us to come back and sail this boat, any sailor in the world if you get the opportunity to sail on formerly Comanche, now Loyal – it’s something you have to jump at.”
On the same yacht, Slingsby was part of the crew which set a new race record of the Rolex Middle Sea Race in Europe in 2021, beating the previous time by more than nine hours.
Defending winner and former Comanche skipper, Matt Allen will return to the 2026 race on Ichi Ban, which was the 2024 Tattersall Cup for overall winner as Celestial V70.
America’s Cup winner John Bertrand gave a speech at the launch while former leader of the opposition Peter Dutton also attended.
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