Southern Ocean Marine Limited of Tauranga, New Zealand, has a reputation for building fast Open 60 ocean-racing machines, backed up by numerous successes in races like the Vendee Globe, Transat Anglaise and Around Alone.

The company's latest triumph is with Open 60 racing yacht Paprec-Virbac II, which won the first ever two-handed Open 60 Barcelona World Race.

French skipper Jean-Pierre Dick and Irish Damian Foxall steered Paprec-Virbac II across the finishing line to win the Barcelona World Race - 28329 nautical miles, sailing short-handed, non-stop around the world for three months.

The Farr Yacht Design racing machine was built by Southern Ocean Marine Limited in 2007 and incorporates many new and innovative features. Jean-Pierre Dick sailed Paprec-Virbac II from New Zealand to Europe to participate in the Barcelona World Race and will now go on to compete in the Vendee Globe and Transat Anglaise, among others.

Southern Ocean Marine Limited Director, Greg Prescott said The Barcelona World Race race, which began on 11th November

2007, was particularly exciting for Southern Ocean Marine Limited, as three of the nine boats in the starting fleet were built in them: Temenos, skippered by Swiss Dominique Wavre and Mutua Madrilena, skippered by Javier ‘Bubi' Sanso of Spain and Paprec-Virbac II. Matua Madrilena was previously Ecover, skippered by English Mike Golding for the 2004 Vendee Globe. Both Temenos and Matua Madrilena are Owen Clarke designs.

Other successful Open 60s from Southern Ocean Marine Limited include Gitana (Farr Yacht Design), built for Loic Peron's Vendee Globe 08 challenge and winner of the Ecover B2B Race in November 07 and Artemis Ocean Racing, built for Graham Dalton's Around Alone campaign as Hexagon and renamed Pindar for Emma Richards.