Phuket King's Cup 2022 - Dinghy racing days 1 & 2
by Guy Nowell 4 Dec 2022 08:05 PST
3-6 December 2022
Phuket King's Cup 2022: John Doerr briefs the dinghy sailors © Guy Nowell / Phuket King's Cup
Phuket King's Cup Dinghy Series – day 1 and 2. After a briefing on how to properly respond to an umpire’s whistle from IJ Chairman John Doerr, the early breeze went off for lunch and there was a lot of waiting to do. A scheduled 14.00 start became an AP on shore, with the entire fleet of (XXX) boats ready and rigged and raring to go. When the flag came down, and the ‘D’ flag went up – well, you’ve never seen a beach empty so quickly.
For the record, the fleet consisted of 15 Open Skiffs, 8 double-handed dinghies (420, 470), 6 skiffs (29er, 49er, 49er FX and a Nacra 15 for good measure), 29 ILCA 4/6/7, and a whole blizzard of Optimists – 118 to be precise – making a total of 177 entries.
Saturday’s race suffered not only from a late start, but also a fading breeze, which left a fair number of DNFs at the end of the day. Sunday started in rather more hopeful sunshine, and on schedule at 11.00, with the Optimists and Open Skiff sailing trapezoid courses and windward-leewards for everyone else. The third race of the day was substantially shortened in order to give everyone a finish.
After two out of four days’ racing, the Optimist class is led by Leow (SGP), and Anandi Chandavarkar (IMNA) leads the Open Skiffs by a narrow margin. For full results please go to www.kingscup.com/news