Sole Sydney Hobart female skipper arrives in Hobart victorious

5:57 AM Tue 30 Dec 2008 GMT

'Helsal IV'

Sally Smith, the lone female skipper has completed her first Rolex Sydney Hobart at the helm of Helsal IV. The big 20 metre cruiser owned by her father, Dr Tony Fisher, was one of two Helsals in this year's race. Tony and Sally's brother Rob were competing on their more race oriented Helsal III.

Sally had just one objective. To beat the best time her brother had ever recorded in earlier races when he skippered Helsal IV. She did that with half a day to spare.

'We certainly broke Rob's record of 4 days, 5 hours and 29 minutes,' says Sally, 'though I must admit that when we were sitting out there totally becalmed I was thinking it won't be 4 days 5 hours it will be 5 days 4 hours.'

In the end Sally did it in 3 days 18 hours and 21 minutes.

'What will be the first thing I say when I see Rob? Where's my bottle of Bollinger!' she laughs.

Sally promises that she won't rub it in that while she steered Helsal IV, big brother Rob and father Tony were forced to retire when they wrapped a brand new spinnaker around their rudder during a sail change that went wrong.

'I was a bit nervous when I hadn't heard from them,' she says, 'I was glad it was only something minor and that no-one was hurt. There's always next year.'

Certainly Sally could scarcely have chosen a better year to do her first Rolex Sydney Hobart. 'What a perfect race,' she says. 'We'd be scooting along at 13 knots, and then we'd be becalmed and then a bit of wind would come along and off we'd go again. I'll definitely be back again.'

Not that Helsal IV's race didn't have its frustrating moments. 'We got down to Bass Strait in the first 24 hours, which we thought was fabulous. But it took us another 24 hours to do another 60 miles. It was very frustrating. We were a fair way out, we had to come back in, then we had to go back out again searching for breeze.

'It was the same last night. A bit of breeze, then nothing, then a bit of breeze again. It was amazing just off Maria Island. We were sitting there for about an hour with absolutely nothing. Just sitting there. We'd been doing 1 knot for 3 or 4 hours. Then all of a sudden the breeze came in and within 10 minutes we were on our ear doing 18 knots.

'The first night we ripped our asymmetrical spinnaker,' Sally recalls. 'We couldn't use it again and I thought, next time I'll bring a sewing machine instead of a hair dryer. Though actually when we tore Big Red, our other spinnaker, we did use the hair dryer to dry it off to put a patch on so maybe I'll bring a sewing machine and a hair dryer.'

by Jim Gale/Rolex Sydney Hobart Media Team

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