24/12/2003 assessment by Oceanographer Dr David Griffin
The main core of the East Australian Current is separating from the coast at Sugarloaf Pt and heading S then SE. Off Sydney, a complex region including northward currents is between the coast and the EAC which is clearly too far offshore for yachts to try and pick up.
Not all the EAC water is heading offshore, however, and some is continuing south along the shelf and going around the landward edge of a large anticlockwise-rotating eddy centered at 36 30'S, 151 30'E as shown in the image opposite. The fleet will pick up favourable currents of 2 knots or more over the continental shelf and/or slope off southern NSW.
Between Cape Howe and Hobart, a rhumbline from the Cape will take the fleet through a second anticlockwise-rotating eddy centered at 39 45'S, 149 30'E, and yachts may pick up a little favourable current for several hours by keeping closer in to Bass Strait, although the details here are hard to read. In contrast, yachts steering along 150E or 151E may face an adverse current of perhaps a knot.
4/1/2004 re-assessment
The satellite altimeter data that came in over the Christmas-New Year break records that the anti-clockwise eddy that was off Eden a week before the race was replaced by a clockwise-rotating eddy, as shown in this image depicting the situation on Christmas Day.