5 Races Completed in the Open Qualifying Series
Today’s second day of racing in the Open Qualifiers series of the 21st Hobie® 16 World Championships in Dapeng China turned out to be a cracker of a day.
The winds were up a little more than expected and it was fortunate that they came in early. The Race Officer marshaled his on water team, together they worked on wind patterns and speeds, and the RO set a 1GO course for race one with the windward mark at 900 and at a distance of .65 nautical miles. Back to back races were planned but the wind petered out as boats milled around the signals boat after the first.
Teams were directed to shore where they had a quick early lunch break and were out on the water again in a short time as the wind had shifted and picked up in strength. The day continued along the same vane with wind shifts and new courses set for each of the four races.
While the winds were generally light it did pick up to around 14kts on a number of occasions and there were some single and double trapping runs.
At the close of day two, five races have been completed in the series and the series has been extremely popular with all competitors who have travelled to the orient for the world championship regatta.
Going into the third and final day the series is being led by Robert and Haylee Andrews from Australia, with fellow Australians, Paul Darmanin and Lucy Copeland in second and Koreans Byeong Ki Park and Hae Kwang Youn in third.
When asked about the series so far, Andrews said: “We came with no expectation but the beach and the hotel have been fantastic but I think the best thing about the location is the friendliness of the locals. Not a lot of English spoken but it doesn’t seem to matter.
The racing has been very challenging. The wind has been quite shifty and there’s been a lot of different conditions, just about every different direction for each race. The race committee and the team have done a fantastic job getting races in where people think, how are they gonna do it. It’s been good fun and it makes you think when the conditions are like that. There’s no easy wins, is there.
I’m looking forward to racing with the guys that have already qualified, even those from my own club, it’ll be good to see some familiar faces and new rivals and racing against them.”
Paul Darmanin and Lucy Copeland were happy with their day two result and looking forward to getting through to the semis.
“It’s great to be back in the Hobies and competing in the World Championship. The event is spectacular. Great Sailing, Great Hotel, Great organization so were really happy. We’ve had a pretty good start to the qualifying series. We’re a bit rusty but sitting in second overall is good and we’re getting a feel for it and getting back into the Hobie way
We’re lucky to have got five races in, in pretty light conditions, we even got some trapping races in, so the race committee has done a really good job there. We’re really looking forward to getting through the qualifiers and some harder competition later in the week.
Stay tuned as tomorrow is the final day of the Open Qualifying Series. For full results head to: http://www.hobieworlds.com/results