Bellerive member leads women's crew in Melbourne

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Despite light and flukey winds on Melbourne’s Port Phillip today, the Tasmanian crew sailing Penfold Audi Sport is leading in all three handicap categories of the Australian women’s keelboat regatta.

In fact, the crew of women from four different yacht clubs in Hobart, skippered by Colleen Darcy from Bellerive Yacht Club, is unbeatable in the IRC category with four wins and a fourth place and just one race to sail tomorrow.

Penfold Audi Sport, an Archambault 31 loaned to the team by former Hobart yachtsman David Ellis, has 4 points on the board after discarding the race five fourth place.

They are five points clear of nearest Victorian rivals, Top Gun (Erin Foster) on nine points and Jungle Juice, skippered by Janet Dean, on 10 points, both Adams 10s the host club, the Royal Melbourne Yacht Squadron.

The Tasmanian crew also heads the leader board in the AMS and PHS division, but the margins are closer.

Going into the final race, Penfold Audi Sport is on 7 points in the AMS category, discarding its worst race of the regatta, a sixth place in race five which saw the Tasmanians caught on the wrong side of a 40 degree wind shift. Only nine of the 16 boats finished the course.

Top Gun holds second place on 10 points after finishing second in race five to Royal Yacht Club of Victoria entrant, Executive Decision (Joanne Norbury). Third overall is Jungle Juice.

Executive Decision, an Adams 10, also placed first in race five in the PHS category. Despite placing only ninth and eighth in races four and five today, Penfold Audi Sport leads PHS with 13 points, two clear of Top Gun on 15 points and Jungle Juice on 17 points.

‘The girls sailed exceptionally today in difficult conditions; the crew work was brilliant,’ team supporter and prominent Hobart yachtsman Scott Brain said after the racing. ‘They got caught on the wrong side of the big wind shift, but recovered well to finish the race as the breeze died away,’ he said.

The other race winners today were Tigris, a Flying 10 skippered by Dee Mason from RMYS which outsailed the fleet in race four this morning to take PHS honours while the Scampi 30 Nouannie (Tanya Stanford, RYCV) won the AMS category. Unfortunately, Nouannie was one of the non-finishers in race, dropping her overall AMS standing from second to fourth.