Royal Varuna Yacht Club Masters Championship Day 2
by Mark Jardine 31 Jan 17:41 PST
30 January - 1 February 2026
In the UK, no-one can be blamed if they've done little sailing in January. There are superb winter series events, which the hardy travel up and down the country to attend, as well club icicles and frostbites which see sailors don the layers for, but it's been generally wet and very windy.
What this leads to is a bit of going 'soft' - the familiar aches and pains of a hard day's racing return with vengeance as you wake up for the second day of an event. You quickly get back into the swing of things, but it can lead to a slight reluctance to get up and don your sailing kit.
There is no doubt that it's far, far easier to get over the second day feeling when it's blazing sunshine, 31 degrees celsius, and the breeze decides to fill in a very civilised manner at midday. There's time to enjoy your morning coffee while watching a couple of the earlybirds rig their boats amongst the palms, catch up on a few emails, and find out who's coming where in other sailing events around the world. If you're looking for a way to set yourself up for the season ahead, then an event at the Royal Varuna Yacht Club is, without question, the place to do it.
In these days of rocketing prices, it's also the way to do it on a budget. Food at the club, and at the cornucopia of surrounding restaurants, is exceptionally good value, and the quality is top notch. I'm a massive fan of Thai food, but western cuisine is on offer, so everyone is catered for. Basically all the excuses not to go sailing which your mind can conjure up are nullified in an instant. You're racing in paradise.
Saturday at the Royal Varuna Yacht Club Masters Championship was bliss. Slightly more wind that Friday allowed us to fully hike at times upwind, while surfing the waves downhill, while being kept on our toes by the shifts. The starts were hotly contested, with every fleet being called back to do it again at some point during the day after collectively being over-eager.
In the ILCA 6 fleet, Shotley Sailing Club's Terry Sutcher continued his dominance, but his picket fence scoreline was broken by Andorra's Carla Canturri. I must admit to being surprised to see an Andorran sailor at the event. The small, mountainous country, nestled between France and Spain, has skiing, but the largest of its 80 lakes is 0.2 square kilometres, so tricky to set a windward-leeward course on. No wonder Carla's out here, revelling in this superb sailing mecca like the rest of us.
Georgii Pimkin moved to the top in the ILCA 7s. He's the only sailor in the class to record all of his results so far in the top three. Finding consistency is rare in this fleet, with passing lanes few and far between. The French offshore sailing legend Bruno Peyron may have been born 32 years before Pimkin, but he's lost none of his skill over the years, picking up a win in race 5 to move up to second on the leaderboard, while Switzerland's Beat Heinz, who led after day one, has dropped to third overall.
I had a better day on the water, with a 4,4,3 scoreline. The decision-making, which felt slow on Friday, became a little easier with some time on the water. I reiterate, there simply isn't a better way to start a northern European sailing season than hopping on a flight to Thailand and competing and/or training at the Royal Varuna Yacht Club. One of the many things I'm enjoying about the Element 6 ILCA that I've charted for the event is how the tiller doesn't rub on the deck near the transom, which I've had happened to me so many times in the past, and led to a patch of gelcoat being wiped out completely on my Frankenlaser from 1982. Quality really does have its advantages.
Morten Jakobsen has a huge lead in the OK dinghy fleet, with Australia's Chris Caldecoat just ahead of the UK's Nick Craig. Post-racing, much discussion was had about different hull shapes and mast stiffnesses, leading to reasons (or is that excuses?) for a good or poor performance in a given race or condition. Either way, the fleet are enjoying some nip and tuck racing and the OK World Championship is going to be a sight to behold. If the superb Robert Deaves wasn't going to be providing his usual excellent reporting for the class then I'd be jumping at covering that in person in a flash.
Sunday has dawned with wall-to-wall sunshine and the promise of three more races, so it's time for a morning coffee before donning the UV top and wetsuit shorts and getting back out there. I really can't wait!
Full results so far can be found here.