Wild Oats XI was ploughing her way relentlessly toward a fifth Sydney to Hobart line honours win, as the fleet prepared to face the toughest conditions of the race.
The two favoured supermaxis continued to head the fleet, with Wild Oats XI maintaining a lead of close to 20 nautical miles over Investec LOYAL (LOYAL).
Wild Thing, which won line honours in 2003 as Skandia, was over 20 nautical miles behind the leader.
Wild Oats XI was well of the pace of her 2005 race record time of one day 18 hours 40 minutes, 10 seconds. Bob Oatley's boat on track to finish on Tuesday evening, over 12 hours behind her existing mark.
Pre-race worries about a tough first night at sea were not reflected in the numbers still racing.
All but one of the 87 starters are still racing more than 18 hours after the race commenced.
The only casualty remained Victorian 39-foot boat Jazz Player, which pulled out around 8pm (AEDT) on Sunday following mainsail damage.
Boats reported winds of 15 to 25 knots overnight, but were bracing themselves for south-westerly gusts of up to 45 knots later in the morning and early afternoon.
"We've got about six hours then of stronger winds ... the gusts building at 9am and by three o'clock this afternoon, starting to die off," Wild thing navigator Graeme Taylor said.
"It's actually quite a small window of strong wind, so we just want to get through that and as that starts to die off we'll start to push a little bit harder."
YuuZoo, which took line honours in 2004 as Nicorette, continued to experience an eventful race. After briefly losing two men overboard on Sunday, they found their forward compartment filled with water early on Monday morning.
"Log through hull fitting has either broken or popped ... leaving a +-40mm hole in the bow," YouZoo skipper Ludde Ingvall said.
"We think that we have it fixed, but half a metre of water between the keel and the forward hatch.
"What drama. Not funny.
"What on earth have we done to deserve this?
Ingvall said Greg Homann and Will Mueller were in good spirits after their unauthorised swim-overboard.
Wild Thing, Ichi Ban and United Kingdom entrant RAN (RAN) were among the early leaders for handicap honours.
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