Paul Buchholz ‘Extasea’ Wins Line Honours at The Rudder Cup

Royal Geelong Yacht Club’s Vice Commodore and 2023 Ocean Racer of the Year Paul Buchholz with his crew aboard ‘Extasea take line honours as the first Monohull at the ORCV Melbourne to Devonport Rudder Cup across the Melbourne Cup long weekend.

The 195 nautical mile yacht race which started off Queenscliff at the mouth of the Bass Strait around 6:00pm on Friday, November 4th proved a challenging race both mentally and tactically for all boats.

It was Jason Close’s ‘Patriot” who was the overall winner after several runner-up finishes and was pleased with the result from the Sydney to Hobart qualifying race.

Buchholz was pleased with their result explaining “The weather was pretty good. We had a southerly that petered out on Saturday off Tassie”

Buchholz and his crew were held up by the Spirit of Tasmania coming into Devonport “We lost around 45 minutes as we had to drop the kite, gybe and wait for them to move on”

“Overall it was fine, the sea state was fine, but the forecast was all wrong, it was an enjoyable race though. The breeze was fairly consistent except for the part in the middle. We were lucky we got the change when it came through”

Top Three results:

Line Honours

1st Multihull – Peccadillo (Charles Meredith)
1st Monohull – Extasea (Paul Buchholz)

AMS overall – for the Rudder Cup

1st Patriot (Jason Close)
2nd Ginan Cam McKenzie/Nigel Jones
3rd Arcadia (Peter Davison)

AMS (Div1) 1st Patriot, 2nd Ginan, 3rd Arcadia

AMS (Div2)
1st Streetcar Racing (Aidan Geysen)
2nd Vertigo (Tim Olding)

ORC overall:

1st Ginan
2nd Patriot
3rd Bandit (Ashley Trebilcock)

ORC (Div1) – 1st Ginan, 2nd Patriot, 3rd Bandit

ORC (Div2)

1st Yolla (Patrick Clarke)
2nd Streetcar Racing

3rd Alien (Justin Brenan)

PHS Overall

1st Arcadia
2nd Kioni (Dennis Ward)
3rd Jaffa (Andrew Neeson)

PHS (Div1) – 1st Arcadia, 2nd Kioni, 3rd Jaffa

PHS (Div2) – Toecutter (Robert Hick/Brad Bult)
2nd Vertigo
3rd Street Car Racing

Double-Handed

1st Joker X2 – Grant Chipperfield/Peter Dowdney

For all information including full results visit www.orcv.org.au/devonport.