Valhalla cruises to Audi A4 Avant win at Hamilton

by Rob Kothe on 1 Sep 2008 On Saturday night last at the Presentation Dinner for the Silver Anniversary Audi Hamilton Island Race Week, Audi Australia’s managing director Joerg Hofmann announced the winner of the Audi A4 2.0 TDI multitronic sedan.

The winners were well known Cronulla Sailing Club cruising sailors Peter and Paula Cox, whose Dufour 385 Valhalla cruised to victory in the Cruising Non-spinnaker division at the 2008 Audi Hamilton Island Regatta.

All the sailors at the 25th Audi Hamilton Island regatta had the opportunity to drive one of the world’s most superb high performance sportscars – a $275,000 fire-breathing Audi R8 sports coupe.

To be in the running for the overall prize, a brand new, yet-to-be-released Audi A4 Avant 2.0 TDI multitronic, worth around $65,000, each yacht had to send one competitor to undertake the Audi Drive Challenge during which the emphasis was on conistency, rather than speed. Then the divisional winners were eligible to win the car.

The Coxs' and their Valhalla crew started their Cruising Non-spinnaker series consistently with a 7, 4 and 5, then had two wins before a final race 10th, their series drop, to join the line up of divisional winners. In this division Terry Herbert’s True Colours was second and John Brand’s Star Ferry third.

Sail-World caught up with Peter Cox yesterday

'My wife Paula and I retired just a few years ago and we'd planned to spend this winter aboard Vahalla in the tropics.

'We left Sydney in May and we arrived in Airlie beach in June and we won't head south until October, when the winds have turned.

'Quite early on the trip I said to Paula. I am not going to Hammo, it’s a newish boat, don’t want it banged around.

'But some Cronulla friends of ours aid they were coming up, with a racing boat, so I though may as well take the boat over there and but to do that we would to have to enter. I wass still not too keen about that.

'Some more Cronulla friends volunteered to come up and crew for us and so we decided to do it. We’ll all raced before, but for Valhalla this was her first race.

'The first two cruising division races, there was just Paula, me and a mate from Airlie beach, so we though we’d take it easy and sit behind the pack a bit.

'To our surprise we got a 7, 4 results. The two crew arrived from Sydney we got a five. Then another crew member arrived and we were sailing the boat better and better and we got a first. By then the handicappers were going to town on us.

'The 385 Large is a big boat, five of us slept on the boat. Our battle cry was ‘Come on caravan’.

'On the Whitehaven Beach Party Day, Jason and Joel Anthill tuned the rig for us, it was a bit sloppy. On Friday we won again and the last race on Saturday all the top three boats finished back in the pack, so we finished up winning our class.

'Our crew was Dave ‘Googs’ and Fiona Evans, Rob Mayne, Eddie, Paula and myself. We had a ball, the boat was sailed fully in cruising mode, the only thing we did was took off the extra 70 metres of chain.

'I drove the R8; I just concentrated on being consistent. The R8 does not go slow, my lap times were within a second of each other. I was concentrating on driving smoothly breaking at same places etc. and that obviously worked. I spent a lot of years in the Bureau of Statistics, so maybe it was the numbers that did the trick.

'It was a great week with an amazing conclusion and we want to thank Hamilton Island, Audi Australia and everyone for delivering such a wonderful regatta.

A'll in all, we are never going to be able to top this Race Week.'



ore news and pix later.