3:21 AM Sun 6 Dec 2009 GMT
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'Phuket King’s Cup 2009. High fives for HiFi, winners of the Phuket King’s Cup. Neil Pryde (one hand on the trophy!) has won now Racing Class four times, equalling Bill Gasson’s record.'
Guy Nowell ©
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"Best regatta ever" declared Neil Pryde, 2009 winner of the Racing division Phuket King's Cup trophy, as he joined the other 10 winners yesterday in celebrating the highly successful event.
In its 23rd year the Phuket Kings Cup attracted 111 entries, 1000 sailors from 33 countries and a substantial number of event supporters and spectators. The weather was just what the sailors ordered; everything from light airs through to solid 20 plus knot winds, tactically challenging tide affected waters, well laid courses, competitive racing and often very close finishes plus great post-race parties.
The regatta attracted a range of sailors from the weekend warriors seeking the chance to compete in an international regatta through to hardened professional sailors from Olympic, America's Cup and world championship racing backgrounds.
While the first three race days were fairly benign with the sailors racing in light airs, strong currents and brilliant sunshine, the strong wind on the lay day was a sign of things to come. Race day four and then into race day five the wind and sea picked up. Ripped sails, broken deck gear, dropped masts and hurt crew awoke the sailors from their comfortable racing demeanour.
In the protest room, international jury chair Bryan Willis and his team dealt with 28 protests. The race management team, led by Jerry Rollin and assisted by Ross Chisholm, did a superb job to deliver fair courses.
And the sailors unanimously agreed, the 2009 Phuket King's Cup was a brilliant regatta.
Simon James, the regatta director, was also very pleased with the event delivery and outcomes. "If you look at all the classes they finished within minutes and seconds of each. It was competitive right up to the end. We also had good weather which always helps and great parties."
The highlight for James was the inclusion of the new division, Modern Classic. "We realised we had to try and get the boats, who had previously done the King's Cup, but because they and the crews are older, they don't think they can race in the top IRC classes anymore, So we gave them the opportunity to come back."
"We ended up having boats finishing within seconds of each other on corrected time and having great racing, and we saw a lot of people who we haven't seen for a number of years back on the water. I think it will be one of the biggest growing classes. It is a chance to renew old rivalries and dust off a few boats. There are a lot of old boats in the region that have done regattas before that are sitting in marinas looking for this kind of racing opportunity.
Peter Wood and his Commanche 42 footer, Windstar, was the inaugural winner of the Modern Classic division.
The Classic division attracted only three entries this year with the elegant, gentle moving Alondra taking out overall honours.
In the Cruising division and taking time out from his round the world cruise, division winner Rod Heikell and his team on the 46-foot Skylax have already promised to return next year and to encourage more cruising boats to join in.
In the Multihull Cruising division it was down two boats as Timothy Robbins's 50-foot Nipper went head to head with Yoshiaki Fujitani's 34-foot Sunfish III. Struggling to find boat speed in the light airs, it was not until the last day of racing and the stronger winds that both boats finally found their pace.
Boat on boat
That's what Neil Pryde and his Hi-Fi team expected at the start of the regatta and that is what he got. This year Ray Roberts arrived with a bigger boat, moving out of the DK46 and into a TP52. Pryde said before the start of the regatta "we were racing him on handicap. Now we are racing him boat on boat. It will be exciting."
While there were many battles on the race course across the 11-boat Racing fleet which ranged in size from Markus Fiala's little Farr 11, Tazo Too, through to Frank Pong's 76-foot Reichel Pugh, Jelik II, it was in the 50 footers that the hottest competition occurred.
Hi-Fi and Evolution Racing raced tack for tack across eight races. In the lighter wind and flat water of the first three race days, even though Pryde expected the boat difference between the two boats to be negligible, Hi-Fi proved it had the better boat speed. So it came down to the handicap. Pryde and his crew of professional sailors put down the throttle to deliver a score card of 2-4-1-1-1-2-2-2. With the trophy in the bag, Hi-Fi did not sail the last race.
Chris Meads's Corby 43 footer, Full Metal Jacket was a surprise performer in the Racing division. Under the direction of America's Cup helmsman Chris Dickson and a crew of fellow New Zealand America's Cup sailors, they did a brilliant job at keeping in touch on the scoreboard with the Jelik II, Hi-Fi and Evolution Racing to finish in fourth place.
Not to be forgotten was the performance of Jelik II which took out line honours in all nine races streaking ahead of its smaller rivals to enjoy the sound of the first hooter. Pong and his team drove the boat hard never out of the top five on handicap results.
One of the many end-of-regatta rumours is that Chris Meads plans to be back at the King's Cup next year, but with a larger boat, maybe even a TP52.
IRC2 ended up being a three-boat race as CPO Wiwat Poonpat and his team on Royal Thai Navy 1 set out to defend their 2008 division title. In the last race of the regatta, while Stuart Williamson's Skandia Endeavour of Whitby concentrated on safely finishing the day with everything in tack, Royal Thai Navy 1 and Peter Dyer's Team Bentley were in match race mode behind the committee boat end of the start line. The end result, another first for Royal Thai Navy 1 which gave them the division title.
Near perfect racing
Other than a torn mainsail, the team on Anthony Hastings's Baby Tonga Hideaways Club reported they sailed a near perfect regatta even finishing in all six races ahead of their favoured rival, Jon Wardill's Australian Maid. With a bottle of rum on each race, the end of regatta celebrations were very jovial between the two teams.
Wardill's first race day was upset when a local trawler dropped a line in just in front of the final leeward mark. Luckily the line did not get tangled around the boat's keel or rudder, but it did cause Australian Maid to take "severe evasive action". A subsequent request for redress was denied.
Robert Tanner's Warwick 55 Shahtoosh did a super job to slip into second place overall.
Blitzed the field
Defending his IRC1 division 2008 King's Cup title successfully, Matt Allen and his Ichi Ban team blitzed the 16-boat field, taking out handicap honours in eight races. Across the conditions, Allen, his tactician Michael Spies and the rest of the team, including Lisa Allen on the bow, were able to pick the wind shifts, change gears and lead the fleet.
While the battle of the Beneteau 44.7s never eventuated, throughout the regatta there was an ongoing battle between Peter Wintle's 37-foot Koull Baby, Yasuo Nanamori's old IOR Farr 43 Switchblade, Brent Morgans's Berneteau First 40.7 L'autre Femme and Ben Copely's Swan 42 Katsu. In the end it was Koull Baby.
In the Multihull Racing Henry Kaye and Fergus Wilmer, co-owners and co-helmsman, also blitzed their 12-boat fleet with nine wins from nine races. Nothing seem to faze this team as they stormed their way through the short windward/leeward courses and then again in the longer coastal courses. With the Seacart 30 Swedish designer, Carl Hennix, on board the team often found themselves racing alongside the TP52s. On the second last day they started behind Jelik II, but were the first boat to finish racing roaring along well ahead of the 76-footer. No other boats in their division seemed to be able to match them on time.
Sadly for defending champion Seamico Cedar Swan's Radab Kanjanavanit, he was unable to repeat his performances of last year. Still racing his father's 30-year-old boat which won the multihull division in 1993 and 2001, a combination of gear breakages and then structural problems forced the team out of contention by the fourth race day.
Who said anything about taking it easy ?
The largest division of the King's Cup was the Bareboat Charter group. Twenty-four boats jostled for the honours. The racing was competitive and at times aggressive with noisy starts and close mark roundings. Even on the windier last two days, many of the fleet were prepared to give it their all
A mistake by Venture's Mike Crisp in race four cost him his pointscore lead. Finishing race three in fourth place, Crisp then set off back home not checking in with the race committee to confirm if a second race was scheduled.
The final winner was Princess Sharda, helmed by Canadian Olympic medallist , Terry McLaughlin.
Fast, furious and fun
Seven entered, five raced and four just survived the fast and furious sailing in the Firefly 850 catamaran division. A series of gear and sail damage on race day four slowed the fleet only slightly. But in race day five, defending champion SEA Property with Damian Ford and Shaun Jackson on board, were five minutes late to the start and then lost its mast after the first work, Moto Inzi collected their spinnaker around its port hull and Twin Sharks headed home before anymore damage could occur.
Racing with Firefly designer and builder, Mark Pescott, Twin Sharks was never out of the top three for all of their races. Skipper Brent Gribble was delighted by their results and said the boat's owner, Bill Wpheles, was equally delighted.
The final results of the 2009 Phuket King's Cup are on the even website -
www.kingscup.com/
by Tracey Johnstone
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