2000 Kenwood Cup - The Lay Day Plywood Cup !
by Susan McKeag 5 Aug 2000 09:31 BST
PLYWOOD - TECHNOLOGY'S FINAL FRONTIER
Kenwood Cuppers Face Toughest Challenge - Staying Afloat
The only boats racing today in the Kenwood Cup are hastily knocked-together
coffin-like shells made of two 8 x 4 sheets of ply, half-a-mile or so of
Sikaflex tape and as many staples as can be fired from a staple gun in
sixty minutes. In short - it is lay-day, and the Plywood Cup.
A long-standing tradition at the Hawaii International Offshore Series, the
Plywood Cup is a charity laugh-about boat race used to raise money for a
local good cause. Teams from competing boats, local businesses and
sponsoring companies pay $500 for the privilege of building their
own-design yacht from the supplied materials and within the time limit
prescribed, then racing it round a three-leg course. Paddles are permitted
as well as sails, but one leg of the course must be completed under sail
alone. Creativity abounds, and several actually stay afloat the whole way
round the course. Happily for the others, the water is quite warm. The
winner this year receives a case of Champagne Mum Cordon Rouge, with a
similar prize for the best design: as in the more serious forms of
sail-boat racing, the two are not necessarily the same.
Real racing resumes tomorrow, with an intensive weekend of short-course
racing. At this halfway stage of the regatta, overall patterns are
beginning to emerge in the various classes and divisions, as well as in the
Kenwood Cup team competition itself. Intriguingly, each of the four
handicap classes is headed by a different nation. New Zealand's Sea Hawk
(Farr 47, Naohiko Sera, NZL) leads class A from Esmeralda (Farr 50, Makoto
Uematsu, USA); Karasu (Judel/Vrolijk, Yasuo Nanamori, JPN) leads class B;
John Kilroy Jnr's Samba Pa Ti leads class C for the Farr 40 Pacific region
championship title, just 4 points ahead of Philippe Kahn's Orion; and Simon
Whiston's Smile leads class D, a mere one point ahead of brother Neil's
Beneteau 40.7 sister-ship Fruit Machine. Outside the handicap divisions in
the J105 one-design class Thomas Coates' Charade also holds a mere
one-point lead, in this case over Sam Hock's Jose Cuervo. The only non-USA
entrant in this class, and the only British crew in the regatta, Michael
Kelly and Chris Brown with the chartered Puff, are fifth.
After the weekend's inshore racing (inshore being a relative term, you
understand - the water is almost 2,000ft deep), the Hawaii International
Offshore Series reaches its climax with the 150-mile Molokai Race, now the
long offshore of the series.
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