New Zealand International Optimist Dinghy Association

Today started with more excitement, again to we were greeted with winds of around 15knots. It was an early start with everyone sailing out to the race course by 10am. It was a day of mixed results for both Aussie and Kiwi sailors but overall the girls out did the boys both moving up 10 places overall.

The winds dropped all day ending with about 8knots. As it dropped it became very shifty and hard for the sailors to read.

The sailors are realising how important the starts are in this standard of fleet. Zak commented yesterday “the starts are everything…. probably 90% of your race”.

All the sailors have made huge improvements with the starts but they definitely aren’t as aggressive as the European - this shows as I think we must be the only team left with no OCS’s or Black flags.

Today we only managed to get two races due to numerous general recalls including black flag generals where some sailors collected their 3^rd OCS.

The highlight of the day was Carolina’s awesome start in race 2 which had her 3^rd round the top mark. She managed to hold top 10 to the finish.

Carolina 30^th 10^th moved up to 65th

Ellie 16^th 25^th moved up to 83rd

Tom 43^rd 49^th placed 65th

Zak 48^th 34^th placed 86th

Ken 39^th 66^th placed 99th

Jack 66^th 63^rd placed 105^th

Boys’ fleet has 145 sailors. Girls’ fleet has 101 sailors.

Back to a 12pm start tomorrow. They are expecting light sea breezes for the next two days so it maybe challenging to get all 12 races in.

Report by Jan and Susannah

Asian Report 5.

Today was teams racing day which started off in about 8 knots of breeze. We managed to get two races done before the breeze died out completely. Now 4 pm and it has been abandoned for the day. Tomorrow we will continue and try to finish teams racing. Tomorrow was scheduled as the day off which the sailors were looking forward to but are keen now to finish the teams racing.

First race we came up against Korea and managed to get a win. There were several judges penalties for both teams around the course. Good race for the kiwis in the end. The second and last race for the day we raced Singapore. They had a better start than us and with their excellent boat speed in the light conditions managed to get 3 boats out clear, so were just out of reach for our guys to do anything. Matt and Cole really gave the one boat they could get a hold of a hard time all the way to the finish. There are 15 teams racing. The top teams as expected look to be Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and hopefully New Zealand. Tomorrow hopefully we will see!

The Thynes bad luck continues with Nick (Boris) cutting his foot on the tiles in the swimming pool this afternoon, so he has gone to Pattaya hospital to have that seen to. He should be ok for sailing tomorrow. So Kate has been busy with that and getting new temporary passports today from the NZ embassy in Bangkok after her bag was stolen by motor cyclist yesterday. Very random event for these parts apparently.

Last evening I went the Asian Champs IODA meeting which was well represented by all countries. We saw the presentation by Singapore Sailing for the next Asian Champs which will be held in Singapore next year from 22-30 July. It will be the 21^st anniversary of the Asian Championships. The first being held in Singapore 21 years ago. They assured everyone the regatta will be a special event. New Zealand will be invited to bring over up to 10 sailors, 3 being of opposite gender. There was an invitation for bids to host the following Asian Champs and 3 countries expressed interest. India, Korea and Sri Lanka. So their presentations will be heard at the next AGM. The Asian Champs are a really great regatta and with a very high calibre of sailors, especially in Asian conditions as you can imagine.

The sailors were treated to a pizza evening and then a hip hop dance show. Tonight we have a sea food barbeque at the club. The Royal Varuna Yacht Club is making a great job of hosting this regatta. There many staff employed at the club to organise everything. Even launching and retrieving the sailors with their Optis. The navy are here to look after, launch and retrieve all the coach boats. Jimmy suggested Murrays Bay could do with some of these guys.

Report by Nigel and the team.