4. After two years away, the 16th Phuket King’s Cup Regatta goes back to the traditional Koh Phi Phi start line with the dramatic scenery and steep island back drops that made the regatta famous during the mid 90's. Competitors take note the new dates are from the 30 Nov to 7 December. More info http://www.kingscup.com

5. The revised 2002 Racing Schedule for the Racing Yacht Club at Admiral Marina, Port Dickson with associated photo's can be found by clicking on http://asianyachting.com/RacingYC.htm

Admiral Marina manager Greg Yap has upgraded the port and starboard entrance lights (2 grp flash (red or green) at 2 sec intervals with 5 mile visibility) and placed a West Cardinal mark (9 Grp Flash (white) @ 10 sec intervals) on Pulau Terumbu (popularly known as submarine island) a reef about 1nm SSW of the marina at location: 02deg 27.99min N and 101deg 50.471min E that runs parallel to the coast for about 1.2nm and completely submerged at high water. More info Phone Greg +6-012-4071880

6. Eighteen racing teams have now entered the Tasaki Osaka Cup the double-handed yacht race from Melbourne to Osaka commencing March 2003 while some are still looking for crew and faster boats.

7. The second Darwin Bali Race will be run this year and starts in Darwin Harbour on 27th July. The event is being conducted by APLI,  the Indonesian Sail Training Association based in Jakarta.

8. A debate has been raging internationally about forming an entity to handle sponsorship money and a unified approach to marketing sailing sports including controlling the schedules and makeup of major world sailing events! Impossible I say as the playing field is to big and the diverse range and number of pleasure craft available today. ISAF President Paul Henderson says the World Governing Body for Sailing is about supplying services so sailors can go to sea to race fairly and is not primarily an event organizer. They charge the high-profile events a fee for the services provided plus expect a healthy contribution towards the development of these Sailing services. In future the ISAF will address the much needed governance over the scheduling and overlapping of events and are encouraged by the positive entry of major sponsors presently into Sailing and does not want to limit the opportunities of the sailor to get individual sponsorship or for the Member National Authority to get national sponsorship but will continue to supply the fair play and integrity for sailing that must be provided if sponsors are going to continue to be attracted.

So it would appear that the present status quo will continue into the foreseeable future and I agree with one of the correspondents that at its very core, Sailing is first and foremost about independence, protecting our freedom to sail the seas and succeeding in our chosen endeavours. That includes the freedom to fail commercially and literally die trying to make a buck. So let's continue to encourage more free market competition, not less. More events mean more and bigger paychecks for sailors, boat builders, sail makers, designers, and yes even magazine editors and Internet webmasters.

9. Here is one sailing event the ISAF have no jurisdiction over that has attracted 100's of thousands of spectators to the Indonesian shoreline. The 2002 Sandeq Race is being billed as the world's fastest, longest and hardest race for traditional fishing vessels that perhaps the world has never known. The annual race for traditional sandeq outrigger sailing boats will start on the 10th of August in Majene and end on the 17th in Makassar. More about these exciting craft and how to join in the fun. Go to... http://AsianYachting.com/news/SandeqRace.htm

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

1. An American survey shows children who go boating are healthier both physically and mentally than those who stay ashore. Conducted by the National Marine Manufacturers Association, the survey used a random sample of 1004 children, half of whom had parents who were regular boaters and half of whom did not. The results showed children who boated were better team players (63 per cent compared with 43 per cent), more optimistic (52 per cent to 43 per cent) and self-confident (75 per cent to 65 per cent).

4. SAME BOAT, NEW TEAM, JULES VERNE RECORD ATTEMPT
As Bruno Peyron needed cash to start building a new 38m (125ft) catamaran Team Kingfisher led by Ellen MacArthur have purchased Orange and plan to set off around the planet next winter to attempt to become the fastest sailors on earth. They giant 110ft (33m) 'megacat' will be renamed 'Kingfisher 2' and re-branded in the colours of B&Q and Castorama the key DIY brands of Kingfisher plc on the 25,000 mile course. The record of 64 days 8 hours 37 minutes and 24 seconds was set just a few weeks ago by Bruno Peyron on the same boat that MacArthur will use on her attempt.

An ocean race of epic proportions reached its final conclusion after almost nine months and 32,700 miles of racing around the globe through treacherous and desolate oceans, dodging icebergs, or doldrums, the race winner was finally decided. illbruck claims first place overall by showing great form from start to finish. The ASSA ABLOY Racing Team ends up successfully with a second place overall. Third place is taken by the crew of Amer Sport One. Winners, losers, glory and defeat, this race has seen it all.  A script for an ending such as this could not have been written better. Djuice, the boat that struggled all the way around the planet claimed victory on the final leg while illbruck took the overall race in a convincing manner.

Winning is about being better. Better prepared, better equipment and making better decisions. John Kostecki and his talented team aboard illbruck were just that much better and have taken competing in the Volvo Ocean Race to new heights. They have attributed their success to starting their preparations early having a management consortium between sailors and sponsor that combined the elements of sailing, technology, teamwork to be in harmony with nature and the environment. Michael Illbruck summed it up “It is cheaper to spend $20 million to win, than spend $10 million to lose”

In the long awaited announcement Mr Hans-Olov Olsson, President of Volvo Car Corporation announced the next Volvo Ocean Race 2005/06 will start from Europe in the autumn of 2005. Mr Jorma Halonen President of Volvo Trucks added "We within the Volvo Group feel a strong commitment to develop the race to even higher levels of success. The media returns have been overwhelming and make the decision to support the continuation of this race easy". On the water, the event has featured closer racing than ever before, new world speed records, and the successful mix of shorter courses and long ocean racing legs to be considered the most successful round the world race to date.

Reaching a cumulative television audience of over 650-million viewers, across major markets in Europe, the United States, South America, Australasia and Africa. The event website, www.volvooceanrace.org has reached nearly three-million unique visitors, making it the most widely viewed sailing Internet site that works as a communicator both internally and externally, and just the pure TV and press coverage alone will give us our money back".

We have waited so long for this, and tried and tried and tried so hard. Never have we been lighter and faster, and probably never sailed better. I haven't slept since Gothenburg, but does it really matter? Gothenburg had the best start. Kiel had the best finish. That's what we think, anyway.

A very hard but great race is over. No more freeze-dried food, smelly sleeping bags and dirty underwear. Sad isn't it?

I couldn't have dreamt about a better way to finish this off. The best way we could give something back to all of you who have supported us all the way and believed that we could really make it happen. It has certainly been the steepest mountain any of us ever had to climb. I am tired, the guys are tired, but we are certainly very happy. Let's go party - Knut and crew on djuice light

The Project is unique in set up as it was initiated and led by an experienced management group (former EF and Intrum Justitia) instead of a skipper. This eventually led to a successful result on the water as well as on the commercial side of the project for the ASSA ABLOY Racing Team and its partners.

We did not beat illbruck, but I am happy with what we achieved but also that we were beaten by the better team. But I was always confident we could pull off a great result. After leg two I knew we had a good boat and the team was great. We just had to keep pushing for a good result. And we did. We worked harder, all of us, not only the crew, but the whole team and all our sponsors. That worked. It also proves that the structure of the campaign was paying off.

As racing yachts are now equipped with modern satellite communications systems Mike Quilter believes that the navigation side of a Volvo campaign is now too much for one person. It's a pretty stressful and time consuming lifestyle. Navigators are now permitted to look at a long list of meteorological websites during each leg together with six hourly position updates coming from the boats while they are sailing. Everyone has pretty good [weather] information now so a navigator is more of a strategist, tactician and meteorologist type role. It's that fine mix of getting the weather right and getting the tactics right.

Several competitors have spoken to me that they would be happy with an 85-90 footer, to an upscaled VO-60 rule (Grant Dalton has stated this publicly). I take great heart that the team that formulated that rule originally, came close to achieving what the competitors thought was good.

It might be well to note that there was provision in the original rule formulation to provide a Whitbread 80 (which would be around 86 feet overall), and that the 60 was conceived as a seperate class to race alongside the IOR Maxi class, but subsequently the Whitbread 80 class was stifled by a world economic recession.

When the rule was being formulated, one of the four criteria was that they should be safer than any other boat of their size. The placement of watertight bulkheads insured that this was so and the rule has been under constant revue and improvement in that area ever since.

“I think we all have mixed feelings about the end. We’re all ready for closure, and to stop moving from boat to hotel to boat etc. But we'll also miss the race, the singular focus, the awesome sailing, and the achievement.” - Mark 'Rudi' Rudiger, Assa Abloy

KIWI GRANT DALTON CALLS IT QUITS The 250-nautical-mile dash from Gothenburg to Kiel is all that stood between Aucklander Grant Dalton and the end of his 21-year round-the-world race career... After seven circumnavigations, the 44-year-old called it a day at the end of the Volvo ocean race.

'I have decided I will not compete [in the Volvo race] again,' he said. 'Hopefully, I will be back as part of a shore team to guide them through the pitfalls that I have fallen into over the last 20 years. But certainly in regard to sailing in the Volvo, this is it for me.' After seven trips around the world, Dalton said his favourite moment was coming into Auckland on New Zealand Endeavour in the 1993-94 event.

Dalton said he had never feared death at sea. 'Not for a single second. How many times I feared I might fail? Many, many times. Not on the water but trying to secure money. I was so close to packing it all in after New Zealand Endeavour.'

The one thing he will not miss is getting out of bed in the middle of the night and pulling wet -weather gear over his head.

The double values of a life in the Volvo Ocean Race are not lost on (Assa Abloy's Richard Mason), the itinerant Kiwi. "We live a wonderful life when we're ashore - we stay in beautiful hotels, meet wonderful people. On land we live like kings. At sea we live like pigs. You look at the way we eat our dinner, and how disgusting it is. And the living conditions, with 12 guys living on top of each other for weeks on end." The upside is that it does give you a greater appreciation for life. After having emerged from the terrifying, ice berg strewn Southern Ocean, Mason says that helps put things in perspective. "People who work in an office environment - I don't think they know what stress is."