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Thailand Nationals April 2007
The not so good sailing for most of the 06/07 summer helped Stu and Paul decide to visit Thailand to sail in the Thai Hobie Cat Nationals during April.
Emails were swapped with the Royal Varuna Yacht Club in Pattaya and arrangements were made for accommodation and to hire one each of the club Hobie 16s.
The hospitality and club facilities at The Royal Varuna are world class and there is plenty of good quality accommodation (but not expensive) within staggering distance of the club.
Team Kiwi arrived at the club to find the boats ready and waiting on the grass in front of the clubhouse. After a few days work they were ready to race.The club was able to let us use some nice new sails sponsored by the local Heineken Brewery.
The regattas was held over two days and there was a fleet of approx 12 H16s and a fleet of about the same number of Hobie Tigers.
Sailing conditions were ideal and the race management was top quality. Three races were sailed back to back each day with slick timing and no delays between fleet starts.
On the first day the breeze topped out at about 12 knots, while on the second day it blew in a bit harder up to a nice two wire breeze of 15 K. Sailing from the Varuna is like sailing in a warm bath, with the Kiwis mostly worrying about getting too hot.
Stu and his crew Brennan both went up from Auckland, and the Royal Varuna arranged one of the local Laser Radial sailors, Kendra, to crew with Paul for the weekend. It was a nice surprise to find Fish from the Fiji fleet at Varuna as well.
Paul and Kendra came a very creditable third in the regatta especially considering that they were racing a 15yo boat and the first two crews had new boats that season.
Fish, Paul, and Stu discussed with the club and the local dealer the feasibility of running an Asian Champs there early in 08 using boats shipped up from the worlds in Fiji. I will certainly be there.