Waiting for the Fat Lady to sing in Phuket

by Guy Nowell, Sail World Asia on 21 Jul 2007 It was another long wait for the breeze to arrive this morning, with the stalwarts in the press corps hiding under the palm trees at the Evason Resort, watching the fleet doing absolutely nothing. After almost two hours on the grill, respite arrived in the form of a 5-kt breeze from the south west, and RO Simon James lined up windward-leeward courses for all divisions except the Classics, who went on a trip round the islands.

It wasn�t a lot of breeze, but it was steady enough, and Peter Ahern�s Yo! 2 led the IRC 1 fleet around three sausages in a shade under 1 hr 14 min. But Somtam Express (Phuket 8, Scott Duncanson) was a just four minutes back and close enough to take the win by 44 secs. Duncanson has now won the regatta with a day to spare, having collected only 7 points from 5 races.

Roger �the Rabbit� Kingdon felt the wheels fall off Moto Inzi today, but they, too, have won the regatta and won�t need to sail again. 8 points from 5 races allows him to discard tomorrow, and Twin Sharks (Bill Phelps) is still 4 points away. Today�s winner was Mamba (Henry Kaye) who took the lead from Twin Sharks by the end of the second leg, and stayed there. �Not our greatest regatta,� said Kaye. �There�s nothing wrong with the boat, but in each of the first four races we made a tactical error � and it cost us�. Nonetheless, the �Retired Admirals� division has provided some spectacularly close racing over the last three days, and second place in the division is till up for grabs.

Seekronghuk (Tim Milner) now has the three-boat Multihull division stitched up after adding today�s 2nd place to three 1sts, but Kerida (Gunther Nutt) in the Classic division needs to race again to protect their current first place from being tied tomorrow and lost on the count-back.

However, there�s all to play for in IRC 2. Two races today gave Madame Butterfly (Peter Dyer) 1-2 to stand on 11 points, but the Selangor Gapurna Youth Team with Niels Degenkow on Phoenix are only one point back with Mike Downard�s Evason Phuket Tua Lek one more point behind. If Tua Lek can get a top result tomorrow and lose a 5th place in the �drop� they will be well-placed for a win. Phoenix sailed a brilliant race this afternoon, leading Madame Butterfly all the way round the race track by a matter of feet, and being rewarded by a round of applause from Peter Dyer's crew as they were pipped across the finish line.

Watch this space.

Full results at www.phuketraceweek.com