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Hobart crew’s close encounter of the shark kind

As the Sydney to Hobart yacht race boats came into port so did the stories of fishy misadventure, including the tale of an impaled shark.

Skipper Tony Kirby feared his 45-foot boat Patrice would suffer damage when something underwater put the brakes on during the night, immediately reducing her speed by about 10 knots.

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“We got this eight-foot shark caught around the rudder … and it wouldn’t come off,” Kirby said after arriving at Hobart’s Constitution Dock on Monday as the 16th finisher.

Taking evasive action, the crew dropped the spinnaker and tried to spin around the boat to shake the unwanted visitor.

“And then (we) lost steerage and in 35 knots of wind that’s quite hairy,” Kirby said.

Adding to the drama, rival Pretty Fly III was bearing down on Patrice’s tail as the pair raced down Tasmania’s mid-east coast.

The shark finally “flopped off”.

“I hope the shark is alright. He came off and swam away,” Kirby said.

Onesails Racing owner and skipper Ray Roberts went through a nervous time about 100 nautical miles north of Tasman Island.

“I’m pretty sure we hit a sun fish,” he said after his yacht limped the remaining 150-odd nautical miles to be the 10th finisher.

“We broke one of our rudders … in the middle of the night and the boat went into a wild jibe and we laid it flat in the ocean and got a lot of water on board.

“But the good thing was none of the crew were hurt because an uncontrollable jibe can be dangerous.

“This being a twin-rudder boat, we still had one rudder but we couldn’t steer properly.”

Victoire owner and skipper Darryl Hodgkinson came into Hobart with an unusual trophy after a crew member dived off the boat on Monday to remove a crab pot that had become tangled around the keel.

“We were going so slowly … and we couldn’t work out what was going wrong,” Hodgkinson said.

“We’d had problems with our speed all night, and there had been a funny noise.”

Ex-military crew member Micky Slinn was lowered over the side and while the boat maintained 12 knots, he retrieved the offending tackle to help them become the 14th finisher.

“It’s one of the bravest things I have ever seen in my life,” Hodgkinson said.

He’s kept the length of rope and deflated rubber buoys as proof of sea adventure.

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