Derwent Sailing Squadron members, owner Phillip Turner and skipper Duncan Hine, with a crew of several other Tasmanians, have sailed the RP66 Alive to a record-breaking line honours victory in the Rolex China Sea Race, winning in IRC Division 1 and second overall.
Among the DSS members aboard ALive in her fighting win was Scott Brain, the current Tasmanian SB20 champion, and George Peacock.
Alive contested the 2014 Rolex Sydney Hobart Race finishing sixth in fleet and is also a previous winner of the Melbourne to Noumea Race and the Brisbane to Gladstone Race.
After the 2014 Sydney Hobart, Alive remained in Hobart for several weeks, contesting the King of the Derwent and the Bruny Island Race.
This past year owner Turner, who is based in the Far East, has been racing the yacht in local races.
Alive has written herself in to the record books for the China Sea Race, setting a new record for the race of 47h 31m 08s, 11 minutes and 59 seconds inside Beau Geste's record, set back in the millennium edition.
After an inauspicious harbour start for the fleet, Alive made very slow progress out of a foggy, damp Hong Kong harbour and, had it not taken four hours for the northeast monsoon to kick in, she could have been looking at taking a much larger chunk out of the record.
Once in open water, the breeze picked up and the RP66 had stiff competition for line honours nearly all of the way, with Banuls 60 catamaran MACH2 making impressive gains through the middle stretch of the race.
Both vessels raced close to the rhumbline, but just over 200nm from the start, Alive chose to peel off south to stay off the coast and set up a more westerly approach to Subic Bay, leaving MACH2 to take an inside line.
The tactics paid off for Phillip Turner and while MACH2 sat in the dreaded Luzon hole for 5 hours, making slow progress, Alive benefitted first from the mid-morning sea breeze kicking in.
In Queensland, also over the Easter weekend, the former Hobart yacht Mr Kite has finished third across the line in the Brisbane to Gladstone Race, placing third in IRC Division 1 and winning the PHRF Division 1.
When owner and raced by Hobart yachtsman Andrew Hunn, Mr Kite took line honours twice in the Launceston to Hobart Race.
Peter Campbell
28 March 2016
