Patience is a virtue - Evason Phuket Raceweek 2007

by Guy Nowell, Sail World Asia on 20 Jul 2007 If you weren’t in Valencia for the first few days of the Louis Vuitton Cup, never mind. The differences between that and the opening day of Evason Phuket Raceweek was 1. The boats are smaller and less expensive, and 2. they DO go racing. Today’s kick-off was a tribute to the patience of the sailors and a testament to the tenacity of the Race Officer, Simon James.

It was a glass-out at 10.00 hrs, and it stayed that way until 12.00 hrs when a few very small pussycats woke up to ruffle the water with their paws. The first windward-leeward race was two sausages totalling 4 miles in length, and the leading boat, Scott Duncanson’s Phuket 8 Somtam Express, negotiated the succession of parking lots in 1 hr 24 mins to claim line honours and a handicap win. Last boat home in the IRC 1 division was Horst Lakits’ Big A in 3 hrs 15 min. Trying stuff indeed.

In the IRC 2 division Mike Downard’s Evason Phuket Tua Lek (Platu) gently eased her way into the lead to take the top spot in front of Phoenix (Niels Dgenkolf). The three big cats in the Multihull division had a bit of a race, with Seekronghuk (Tim Milner) finishing first and best, and the Firefly 850s argued the start and every mark rounding, with Moto Inzi (Roger Kingdon) throwing down the gauntlet by chalking up the first win of the series.

Meanwhile… the stately Classic division took off slowly on an out-and-back race which led to Tom Howard’s 101-year-old Seraph digging out sails that they never even knew they had to lead the division home by 43 minutes for an emphatic win. We can only assume that the esky-trimmers were working overtime…

As the back markers finished the first race, there were vague signs of a little more breeze, so the RO went into a another start sequence for IRC 1 and the Fireflys, but sent the other divisions home for fear of hitting the day’s cut-off at 1700 hrs. And the breeze did come in – a little – having swung 90 deg to the right, to allow a ‘quick’ race of four 0.6 nm legs. Peter Ahern’s Yo! 2 (Farr 40) grabbed the opportunity to nip round in an impressive 38 minutes, to turn the tables on Somtam Express who had to settle for 2nd place on the water and on handicap, with the other Phuket 8 in the division, Vino (Jim Poulsen), scoring a second 3rd place.

The Fireflys went at it hammer-and-tongs again, and again Moto Inzi took on the opposition to record another 1st place, even though the whole division finished within 2 min 30 sec of each other. ‘A very satisfactory start to the regatta’ was Roger Kingdon’s comment, ‘now we just have to it a few more times!’ Given that the results in this class were decided in the last race of the last day at Koh Samui there’s sure to be plenty to keep interested observers entertained over the next three days.

The day rounded out with mandatory refreshments (and the prizegiving) at the Evason’s Into the Beach bar, and followed on to an invitational pig roast at Big A Resort courtesy of Horst Lakits.

Tomorrow’s forecast is looking better, and RO Simon James has got Huey’s number from Tony Denham. Watch this space.

Full results at www.phuketraceweek.com