MatchRaceThailand Cup II - Rather impolite at the starts

by Neil Semple on 7 Jun 2010 Jon Eriksson from Finland added to his tally and won Match Race Thailand Cup II here on Sunday offshore the Royal Varuna Yacht Club on the sparkling waters of the Gulf of Siam in light to medium winds.

The teams skippered by Cristopher Lim (Singapore), Kevin Whitcraft, Neil Semple and Morten Jakobsen (all Thailand) were fully fired up at the beginning of the day all determined to make up for Saturday's defeat at the hands of the Finn. They all fought valiantly but the Finn was in top form.

The courses were short 'sausage' shaped courses that took about 15 minutes to sail. The vital prestart area was located just off the beach bar at Varuna and all the prestart action was a treat to watch.

The draw for the pairing list meant that some of the key matches came early in the day. Eriksson/Jakobsen was the first match, with Jakobsen entering on the favoured starboard side. They fought tooth and claw during the four-minute pre-start throwing their boats into tacks and gybes like they were going out of fashion, but without inflicting a penalty on each other. But it was at the top mark that the first penalty of the match was inflicted on Jakobsen by Eriksson. Jakobsen approached on starboard and had to tack to port to round the mark. The Finn nipped in on port to leeward of Jakobsen while he was tacking. Jakobsen's spinnaker touched Eriksson's shrouds - penalty against Jakobsen for not keeping clear. It was very close on the run as well with Jakobsen getting an overlap on Eriksson which was from clear astern but the Finn making no movement at all to keep clear and penalty on Eriksson. There was some very fancy manoeuvring at the bottom mark that did not work out well for Jakobsen, and the Finn escaped with a large lead.

The Finn was in fighting form against for his match against Kevin Whitcraft, taking him out to coffin corner on the left hand side of the prestart area. Kevin eventually broke free and gained a windward advantage a vital final few seconds on the approach to the start, but at the expense of a red flag penalty. This effectively ended the contest. As Princess Anne of Great Britain once remarked 'match racing is the only sport where it is all over before the start'.

The Singaporean team led by Christopher Lim did very well, but their racing today was marred by being over the line early and not returning to start properly. This resulted in them forfeiting the match. Despite this, their coach Wearn Haw commented, 'this is a great event with good race management and we look forward to returning for more racing soon'.

Numerous spectators enjoyed the racing, live race commentary by the racers, and not least having most spectator seats located inside the RVYC beach bar only 30m from the start/finish line and bottom mark.

The Commodore of Royal Varuna Yacht Club had one comment: DO IT AGAIN – SOON – AND MAKE IT A BIGGER EVENT. The organizers were pleased with the outcome of this event, proof that it is possible to arrange a match-race event that was graded level five by the world governing body, the International Sailing Federation (ISAF).

Following the successful event, the Organizers have revealed plans for two further events to be held in September in Varuna; contact matchracethailand@gmail.com, if you would like to take part.