Phuket King’s Cup – Moving Slowly

by Guy Nowell, Sail-World Asia on 12 Dec 2015 Maybe the breeze was feeling a little sluggish after yesterday’s lay day. Maybe Aeolus thought that three good days was quite enough. Whatever, Mr Windy stayed in bed this morning and was very reluctant to make an appearance at all.

The camera boat, and your scribe, started the day on the Cruising course a couple of miles straight out from Kata Beach, where absolutely nothing was happening apart from a birthday party on one of the Russian Bareboat Charter entries, Ti-Punch. So we took off south to visit the Racing classes.

PRO Ross Chisholm had taken the Racing divisions away down to somewhere west of Nai Harn, and then a bit further, where he was eventually (and after a considerable wait) able to run three windward-leeward races with a windward mark at 110? or thereabouts. Sarab Jeet Singh’s Windsikher II took the first race by a squeaky four seconds over Team Premier Oi!, and shared third place with the same boat in race 3 when they both corrected out at 1h 57m 58s precisely. After sweeping up the Raja Muda Cup just 13 days ago, Singh and the Windsikhers have both hands firmly on the IRC 0 King’s Cup and can in all probability look forward to seeing a new name on the trophy.

After today’s racing there will be rather more of a fight in IRC 1 where Kevin Whitcraft’s Wan Ma Rang and Ken Eyears’ Redefine (which, incidentally, was Windsikher I in a previous incarnation) are on equal points, and Matti Sepp’s Blue Note justthree points back. Likewise, Yasuo Nanamori’s Karasu - a previous winner at the King’s Cup – has a slim two-point lead over Jessandra II in the IRC 2 division. There will also be a last-ditch fight between the three Alan Carwardine-designed catamarans at the top of the Multihull Racing class, with Hurricane, Java and Wow on 14, 15 and 15 points respectively.

After watching one and a half races, we decided that we ought to pay tribute to the bulk of the King’s Cup fleet by revisiting the Cruising divisions. This proved to be a mistake as there was still nothing moving at anything more than 1 knot on a Coleridge-glassy sea, with a ‘windward’ mark at 280?.

So we went home, due east, and straight through a couple of miles of good solid 12kt breeze on the way to Kata Beach. There were some very funny wind patterns on the south west coast of Phuket today.

Full results can be found at www.kingscup.com

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