Ichi Ban's owner Matt Allen is wary of the foreign challengers for Sydney to Hobart overall honours, but says his boat is infinitely faster than when it won last year.
Allen's 52-footer has won a host of races since its Sydney to Hobart triumph in 2017.
But while they have invariably beaten their local rivals, there's some well credentialled foreign entrants in the Hobart race.
"The Australian boats we know, and we generally can get the better of them but there's a lot of boats very similar in setups" Allen told AAP.
"There's a Cookson 50 from America (Privateer), that's very good, there's Teasing Machine (from France).
"Some of these boats we haven't raced against and they are a bit of an unknown quantity.
"We've got to beat the 20, 22 boats around our size."
Allen believes the forecast is favourable for his boat and others of a similar length, though he doesn't discount the chances of the smaller yachts.
"It's a much better forecast than probably we were expecting." Allen said.
Allen's confidence has been boosted by a lot of small changes to the boat over the past 12 months which have enhanced her overall performance.
"They are very small changes, but they are the one per cent changes that make in combination a big difference to the boat," Allen said.
"Twelve months of sailing since this time last year has really made a big difference to the way that we can change gears, the sail set ups and the rig set ups.
"So we're going infinitely faster than this time last year which gives us a reasonable amount of confidence going into the race."
Among the smaller boats will be 36-foot Midnight Rambler, owned by Ed Psaltis whose AFR Midnight Rambler won the infamous 1998 race in which six sailors lost their lives.
Four of that crew will be aboard Psaltis' boat this year.
"There's plenty of mongrel there, but whether our bodies are capable of delivering on that mongrel I'm not so sure," Psaltis quipped.
The fleet is down to 85 with Kostaka Monster Project unable to meet race paperwork requirements and Aikin- Hames Sharley withdrawing due to keel damage.
