They’re off and racing
Today was the first day of racing at the 21st Hobie® 16 World Championships in Dapeng, Shenzhen China and it turned out to be a magnificent day for everybody concerned, but most importantly for the Hobie Masters sailors who have flown in from around the world.
The weather was hot, the water clear and warm and for a short time a light drizzle cooled everyone down just before racing began. A light breeze of 8kts meant race one, on day one of the regatta went ahead on schedule and it turned out that there were four races held during the course of the day.
After the lights winds during race one a short lunch break was held and then in the afternoon three races were contested back to back in increasing winds which that got up to around 15kts at times and saw single and double trap legs.
Rob Waterhouse and Kerry Waterhouse from Australia were leading a very close field at the top of the leaderboard in the Masters at the end of day one. Rob spoke about his experience so far and how he went on the water in todays racing.
“Kerry and I are pretty impressed with the location, it’s a white sandy beach with palm trees just what you expect at a Hobie Cat® regatta. It was just beautiful sailing out on the water, we had fairly light winds for the first race but sure enough we were out there on the water at about 11 o’clock.
The wind in the first race was a bit light and we were lucky enough to take that away, a run-a-way win actually that went our way. We came into the beach and had a beautiful lunch and then back out for three back-to-back races in about 10 to 15kts, perfect double wiring. There were multiple winners, three different winners for those three races.
We are going in to tomorrow in equal first, we’re leading the South Koreans on a count back with the Koreans coming second and the Edwards’ of South Africa sitting in third at the moment. They were absolutely brilliant sailing conditions out there and we had a wonderful day.”
Standing in second position is the team from South Korea Byeong Ki Park and Hae Kwang Youn, the team is very confident and have high expectations of their overall performance.
“The area here is very beautiful and it a very lovely beach and the water is very nice. We came 6th in the Masters at the last Worlds in Australia in 2014 and 3rd in the Open, so we expect to do very well here also. We were winning the first race in light wind and on the last leg we tried to go outside the mark and looked for some wind because it had dropped off and it didn’t work for us, but we were very happy with second.
When we raced in the afternoon we were very happy because we like strong wind and we think there will be strong wind again tomorrow. We hope so. In the end we will be the World Champions the masters of Shenzhen.”
William and Lucinda Edwards from South Africa finished the day in third place just 2 points behind first, William offered the following comments.
“Having sailed in Weihai we were sort of wondering how this venue was going to be, but it’s way beyond our expectations, the organization has been incredible, the beach venue has been really nice and the hotel is very nice as well.
We have settled in very quickly and the boats were prepared excellently for today’s racing, they were allocated quickly and I have to say that I could not fault them in anyway whatsoever. They are very beautiful and everything was working perfectly. The Race Officer Hooper got us going with no waiting. The racing was a bit light, very technical actually in the first race. In the afternoon the wind came through and there was fantastic sailing, I have to say I could have done better but it was really awesome out there today.
All in all I have to say that this is turning out to be a fantastic event. Thanks to everyone who put it together.”
Full results at hobieworlds.com/results
