Derwent Squadron confirms Launceston to Hobart Overall winner

9:24 PM Wed 30 Dec 2009 GMT

'L2H fleet off Sandy Beach on the Tamar River soon after the start.' Peter Campbell &copy

The Derwent Sailing Squadron today confirmed the Tamar Yacht Club entry Blue Sky as the Overall Winner of the third annual Sargison Jewellers Launceston to Hobart Yacht Race.

With all but one of the 35 starters finishing late yesterday after enjoying a spinnaker ride up the River Derwent, race director Ron Bugg also confirmed Pisces as the winner of the IRC division and Whistler as first in the strong AMS division.

Blue Sky is a Beneteau 40.7 skippered by Richard Fisher, immediate past commodore of the Tamar Yacht Club and a successful dinghy and sports boat sailor. The well-sailed yacht's crew included Rob Matthews, a survivor of the fatal sinking of the Launceston yacht Business Post Naiad in the 1998 Sydney Hobart.

'We had a good start, were sixth out of the Tamar and beat the tidal change through Banks Strait, but I think the key point in our win came when we decided to gybe out to sea south of Maria Island and picked up the building nor'easter,' skipper Fisher said today.

'It was a race of great variety in wind direction and strength.in Storm Bay yesterday we had 30 to 40 knots on the nose,' he added.

Blue Sky and Whistler sailed and finished close together, Blue Sky beating Whistler across the line by just over a minute, but the corrected time margin for Overall first place was just over 25 minutes.

On corrected times, Blue Sky won the PHS division and Overall first place from two Hobart yachts, Whistler, skippered by David Rees from the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania, and Mark Ballard's 42 South, from Bellerive Yacht Club.

Pisces, David Taylor's Sydney 36, also from the RYCT, made a remarkable recovery to win the IRC division and also place second in the newly popular AMS division. She lost at least 20 minutes after running onto a mud bank at Beauty Point soon after the start of the L2H on Sunday and was last boat out of the Tamar River.

Luckily, Taylor and his crew were able to free the yacht from the mud by hoisting their asymmetric spinnaker - the alternative was at least two hours before the tide began to flood.

Whistler, a Dovell 38, sailed a consistently good race, winning the AMS division from Pisces and Blue Sky and finishing runner-up in both the PHS and IRC divisions. Sullivans Cove Whisky, skippered by Dianne Barkas, the only woman skipper in the race, placed fourth in the PHS and AMS divisions.

The race director also announced John Brierley's Crowther 48 catamaran Deguello as winner of the new Multihull division and Prion (Michael Viney) as winner of the Single Handed division.

The 22-year-old Deguello was designer Lock Crowther's personal catamaran in partnership with Olympic sailor John Haynes and has been owned by Brierley for two and a half years. Deguello had fastest time among the multis and on corrected time on from Storm Bay (Stephen Laird) and Plan Four (Peter Newman).