Top of the Gulf, day 4. A little history in the making.

by Guy Nowell, Sail-World Asia on 5 May 2015 It’s been a tough few days racing. Tough on the Race Officer who has called more mark movements than any of us has had hot dinners, and tough on the competitors who had to wait around – a lot – and put up with some of the most shifty and recalcitrant wind conditions that we have seen at a regatta in a long while. Nonetheless, PRO Denis Thompson completed the card, with a full set of races for all divisions from the take-one-a-day prescription for IRC 4 (Cruising) up to a full house of ten for the Platu fleet arguing the Coronation Cup. You can’t call the wind, but you can make the best of what you’ve got, and at the end of four days with very few glamour moments there were no complaints from the competitors. On the contrary.


Today’s closing strokes were conducted under bright but overcast skies, starting in 4-6kts of breeze with an appropriate ‘Gone Cruising’ course for the Cruising division that went 18nm to Koh Khram Noi and up to Koh Rang Kwian and then home. Amore collected the prize for today’s race, but the smallest boat in the division, Yasunori Osada’s diminutive Beneteau 21 Tai Two won the division overall. Strike one for the little boats.

The three-boat Ocean Multihull division was handed a windward-leeward race and a distance race to follow. Khun Radab Kanchavanit’s Cedar Swan, after radio calls for course clarifications from the RO, scored 2, 1 for the day to take the title from Sonic (second last) and Licence to Chill (last), and trophies were awarded accordingly.

John Morris’s Iolanthe, formerly known as Men at Work, prevailed in IRC 2 after two races today, and in IRC 1 Foxy Lady VI nailed a division win to the wall after a start line ‘contact’ took EFG Mandrake to The Room and a DSQ for today’s first race that left Bill-and-Janice-Bremner successfully defending the IRC 1 title with a little help from Steve McConaghy.

The Platu fleet arguing the toss for the Coronation Cup was never really in doubt – Kingdom Properties (Scott Duncanson) went racing today with a bottle of champagne stashed in the bilge “just in case”. The sums said they had to finish better than 11th (in a 13 boat fleet) to be able to throw away the last race and successfully defend their title. A little bit of History was made: Scott Duncanson has won the Coronation Cup five times, but nobody has ever successfully defended this title – until today. After a poor start in the second row (actually, closer to the lobby than the back row of the stalls) Duncanson & Co took the transoms of almost all the fleet, popped out on the right and were second at the top mark. They then consolidated and improved, and took the lead on the last run to the finish. Out came the champagne, and deservedly so. “It was all about getting a lot of little things just right all through the regatta,” said Duncanson. (Watching Kingdom Properties working upwind, flat on the water and with spectacular boat speed, we think that the Eelsnot must have had something to do with it).

The last race for the Platus was a playoff for second place. Ben Williams on The Fox started well having match raced Easy Tiger before the start, and thought they had it in the bag. But Chris Way and the Tigers flipped on to port, went all the way right and were in the lead at the top mark. “We thought we went the right way, but it was the wrong way,” said Fox helm Warwick Downes. “Ben and I raced the very first Coronation Cup (1996) in Hua Hin. We’ll back next year, and we’ll be claiming an age allowance. We’ll be sailing The Silver Fox…” Chris Way and the Easy Tigers took second place, and the silver Foxes were third.

At a packed prizegiving dinner tonight, on the lush and expansive lawns of the Ocean Marina Yacht Club, the Minister of Tourism and Sports, Khun Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul handed out the biscuits to all the trophy winners. 2015 probably won’t go down as a vintage year in the annals of Top of the Gulf on account of some very uncooperative meteorology, but Race Officer Denis Thompson made the best of a bad hand and came up trumps. There wasn’t one grumble (that we heard). OMYC provides what is probably the nicest location for any regatta in Asia. The combination of big boat racing, and dinghy classes, and the Thai Optimist National Champs and the Coronation Cup make for a top class event that really should be on every Asian sailor’s entry list.

Full results at www.topofthegulfregatta.com