Adam Minoprio wins Asian Match-Racing Championships

Hello again from BlackMatch on our final day in Malaysia,

Today saw us taking on Neil Semple from Thailand in a best of 5 final. Having maintained a perfect scorecard for the entire week, this is certainly what we intended to carry on doing and we did so, managing to take the final 3-0.

Things didn't go totally our way though. After forcing a penalty on Neil in the first match of the day in the pre-start and sailing away for a comfortable victory, our second match saw us coming off the line on opposite tacks with Neil heading out to the favoured right hand side of the course. Neil gained a healthy lead from our mistake and we had to work extremely hard up the first beat, managing to close the gap up at the top mark. We found ourselves heading back towards Neil on port managing to take his stern and gain starboard rights once we tacked back. This allowed us to force the Thailand team to tack just before the top mark and sail them past it, gaining the lead in the process and sailing away for another win. In the final race we forced Semple over the line at the start, meaning that he had to return to the start line and re-start, allowing us to develop a significant lead which we maintained to the finish.

This was a great event, we did what we came to do, qualifying for the Monsoon Cup in November and taking in a wealth of information needed for us to be competitive. We are looking forward to the New Zealand Match-Racing Nationals in November, and hope to better our 4 th place at this event last year.