Sea, Sail, and Spa

Thailand is well known for it's tropical beaches and luxurious spas. Combine this with a top level sailing regatta and you have a winning combination.
Text by Suzy Rayment and Guy Nowell Sailing photgraphy by Guy Nowell

Way back in, ooh, 2004 Phuket Raceweek kicked off with a grand total of 16 starters for an event that was billed as ‘Asia’s green season regatta, when the wind blows.’ Summer is the off-season in Phuket, on account of (usually!) grey skies and blustery southwest monsoon winds. The reasoning was perfectly sensible – hold a regatta when the weather was more in tune with sailing than with picture postcards.

And the venue that hosted that first Phuket Raceweek was the Evason Phuket Resort & Six Senses Spa. What a brilliant combination! Thailand is well-known for its tropical beaches resorts and luxurious spas, so combining them with a sailing regatta was always going to be a winning formula.

The first Raceweek really was a ‘week’, but the next year it became four days of racing in a nod to the busy schedule of the Phuket residents and the packed programme of a few overseas visitors. But the name stuck. Over the years the wind has not been quite as consistent as the season might suggest, but Phuket Raceweek has repeatedly voted a ‘great event’ by all those participating.

Now the regatta has been taken to a new level with the Six Senses Spas Group coming in as title sponsors, and this year saw 45 starters turning out to get the 2008 edition under way – almost triple the starting field of only four years ago. The regatta started under drizzly grey skies with a short trip north from the starting area in front of the Evason, up into Chalong Bay and round the port channel marker. By the time the fleet had nipped smartly round the course in 14 kts or so of breeze, the sun had come out and the wind was strengthening. A second, windward-leeward, course for all the racing divisions was quickly completed, with Peter Ahern’s newly-refurbished and somewhat modified Farr 40 Yo!2 claiming outright victories in IRC 1 in both races. On board Madame Butterfly, skipper Jeff Harrison threw down a 1,2 gauntlet to the IRC 2 division against an opening 3,1 from Niels Degenkolw’s ¾-tonner Phoenix.

The next day dawned bright and breezy, and the first offering from Race Officer Simon James was a trip round the seaward side of the islands surrounding in some pleasantly bumpy water that gave plenty of scope for those that could handle it. But that wasn’t everyone: some crews found a 2m swell and 18 kts of windspeed too tough to handle, and there were numerous heavy and unsettling broaches that gave rise to some ‘more conservative’ sailing.

Phoenix in hot pursuit as Madame Butterfly drops neatly at the leeward mark

Scott Duncanson’s Phuket 8 Raimon Land (formerly Somtam Express), a firm favourite for podium honours, was blown out of the series by a broken rudder stock. In the afternoon the Yo!2 crew put on another commanding display over a windwardleeward course to claim their fourth win from four races. This was Sunday sailing for a crew from Perth, and pretty much the same for Susanne Ward’s highly experienced Danish match racing crew on board Phoenix, fresh from winning laurels at the recent X-41 World Championships in Copenhagen. They scored two wins in a row to lay firm claim to the top of their division, with Ward saying, “this feels like great sailing to us – we usually race in 20 kts of wind or more at home, but the water is a great deal colder!”

Day three was a carbon copy of day 2 – the same courses, and the same winners in the top divisions. In the midst of all the consistency, a battle royal was seething among the competitors in the Firefly 850 class. After three days and six races only two points separated SEA Property, Mamba and Moto Inzi at the top of the division. These speedy sports catamarans were sailing the same courses as the monohulls, but a lot faster. One of the visiting Australian competitors on board Yo!2 was particularly impressed: “We were having a grand time outside the islands, surfing the swell at 14-16 knots… and then this cat came streaking past us as if we were standing still!” Aside from the Firefly 850s, the regatta attracted an entry of three cruising and five racing multihulls. Mark Horwood’s Charro and Bob Brindley’s X-Catriot battled it out over the four days of racing, with both boats finishing the regatta on equal points and Charro taking the prize by virtue of having won the very last race.

Fabulous duplex villa at the Evason Phuket Resort

By the end of the third day the winners of the IRC 1, IRC 2, Club Charter, Ocean Multihull and Classic classes had already been decided, but the other classes still had something to argue about. Nonetheless, it was still a full-fleet turnout on the sunniest morning of the regatta. For Yo!2 the regatta was already won – they only had to prove that they could sail in post-party mode. They can, and proved it by taking the last two races both on handicap and on the water to make it a clean sweep of eight wins from eight races. Peter Ahern was a very happy man. “We’ve done a lot of work to the boat, new keel, new bulb, new sails, and it has certainly made a difference. This regatta has produced absolutely the best sailing I have ever seen in Asia – this really is as good as it gets. Congratulations to the regatta organisers, Image Asia, on a great event.”

Six Senses Phuket Raceweek has something for everyone, and it’s not all about hard and fast racing. In addition to the IRC racing fleets, the regatta welcomed 12 boats in Club Charter, eight multihulls and of course the grand old(er) ladies in the Classic Class. Yet again Tom Howard, owner of the evergreen and ever-beautiful Seraph, was obliged to ‘give away’ the Perpetual Seraph Trophy to Gunther Nutt’s Kerida for the third year running. A one-time cabinet-maker, Nutt is a wooden boat-builder in his own right, and Kerida is beautifully restored labour of love. And it’s a family affair, with Gunther’s wife on the helm, their son crewing, and a family friend bringing along a spare pair of hands.

For the fifth year in a row Phuket Raceweek delivered a firstclass regatta that is a firm fixture on the calendar for many sailors in the Thailand/Malaysia zone. Last year ‘Asia’s windiest regatta’ had a bit of fun poked at it when the breeze was often less than obliging, but it certainly lived up to the new tag-line this year: ‘Asia’s most exciting and fastest-growing regatta’.