Patrice Six wins first IRC races at Sailing South

by Peter Campbell on 3 Jan 2008
The Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania’s eighth annual Sailing South Regatta on Hobart’s Derwent River today produced a new winner – in fact, a double winner – in the form of Patrice Six, Tony Kirby’s Danish designed and built X-41.

Patrice Six had its first-ever race in the Rolex Sydney Hobart, the second in yesterday’s King of the Derwent, and won her third and fourth races in the IRC division of the Huon Aquaculture Sailing South Regatta 2008.

Kirby is an experienced international sailor, including many races as principal helmsman on the ocean racer Loki, but this time he is campaigning his own boat.

Patrice Six outsailed the more favoured boats on corrected time in today’s opening of Sailing South, two short windward/leeward races sailed in brilliant conditions on the Derwent, a warm and sunny day with a 10 knot south-south-easterly breeze.

In each race, Kirby got excellent starts and picked the wind shifts well to finish third across the line astern of the larger boats Limit, skippered by Roger Hickman, and Endorfin, sailed by David Kellett, two Sydney-based stalwarts of Sailing South.

In the first race Patrice Six won comfortably from two Tasmanian boats Pisces, skippered by David Taylor, and Silver Mist (Andrew Sutherland), but her win in race two was by just eight seconds from line honours winner Limit. Third place went to Endorfin.

Pisces made up by winning the first race under PHS Division 1, beating Silver Mist and Patrice Six. Race two saw first place on PHS corrected time go to Silver Mist from Pisces and Patrice Six.

The first-ever regatta event for the growing F40 fleet on the Derwent produced aggressive starts, a protest and close competition between the five boats.

The protest arose from an incident in the pre-start maneouvres for race one, the outcome being that Euro Central (Hughie Lewis) lodged a protest against second placed Voodoo Chile (Andrew Hunn). The protest has yet to be decided.

The first race for the F40s went to Wired (Stephen Boyes) from Voodoo Chile and War Games (Wayne Banks-Smith) while in the second race Voodoo Chile reversed the result, with Wired second and War Games again third.

Two members of the well known Hunn medical family had wins today, Andrew winning race two of F40s with Voodoo Chile and his father John taking out the PHS Division 2 race with the well-named Attilla.

Attilla won from Just Jones (Peter Girblin) and Fine Cotton (Gavin Adamson).

PHS Division 3 saw a win for Tihany (Julius Szolvik) from Epoxy Warrior (Ross Mannering) and Lewis Marine (Paddy Hodgman).

Racing continues on Friday with a long distance race down the Derwent for all divisions, starting and finishing of Castray Esplanade, with the start for the first division at 11am.

The IRC fleet is expected to race around Betsey Island in Storm Bay, the other divisions to race within the river.

Sailing South Regatta 2008 is sponsored by the fishing farming company Huon Aquaculture, and supported by Mariner Boating Holidays and Motors Ltd, the Tasmanian Holden distributors.