Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2025 | Part 2 - Will Oxley Talks Sailing and Climate Change

Will Oxley is a highly experienced and renowned ocean racing navigator and meteorologist. He will be the navigator, along with Chris Lord, on the 100 footer SHK Scallywag for the 2025 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race. One of the most memorable of the many interviews we have held with Will over the years, was at the end of the 2019 Hobart Race when he was navigator aboard Matt Allen’s TP52 Ichi Ban. At the time, devastating bushfires were raging across Australia and the fire-driven pyrocumulus clouds were directly changing the race weather conditions along the NSW and Victorian coasts. We asked Will at the time how the pyrocumulus impacted the weather and, as always when talking to Will, he first went back to the general climate context to describe how that was changing the weather – and ergo changing the weather patterns of the Sydney Hobart race. Some six years later we were keen to understand how those patterns have evolved and changed in the time since. In this second part of our discussion with Will (who is also an experienced marine ecologist), he offers some extraordinary evidence of how the ongoing southward migration of warmer water is strengthening the Australian East Coast Current and dramatically changing the marine ecology of Tasmania’s coastal waters.