Women and Youth World Championships, Grand Masters and Great Grand Masters International Cup

Series 2
The Women and Youth are each competing for World Championship titles while the Great Grand Masters, and the Grand Masters are competing to take home the Hobie International Cup in each division.

Day 1
The variety of conditions over the day’s three races proved to be an excellent start to the series.
At the close of day one Grahame Southwick and Sharon Rayner from Fiji are leading the Great Grand Masters followed by Bruce Tardrew and Nicholas King from Australia and Dominique Robert and Lisbeth Buonanno from France are in third place.
Masters champions Rod and Kerry Waterhouse from Australia now lead the Grand Masters with John Duchatel and Evelyn Curtis from Australia in second position and Michael Montague and Kathleen Ward from the USA in third.
The Women’s Class is headed by Nina Curtis and Haylee Outteridge from Australia over Meagan Bursa and Bonnie Butler also from Australia and completing the top three are another Australian team Krystal Weir and Georgia Warren-Myers.
The Youth division is topped by Auxence Thomas and Noa Ancian from New Caledonia, L Belouard and Theo Bore also from New Caledonia are in second place, with Benjamin Brown and Emily Rathburn from the USA in third place.
The 2016 Hobie 16 World Championships will be on the water again tomorrow with some excellent racing in this amazing part of the world. Stay in touch with all of the action.

Day 2
Conditions on the course were variable throughout the day with only a few light puffs blowing across the bay when competitors arrived at the sailing venue. However, a fair 8kts picked up to get the fleet off from the starting line on time for race one.
As the boats sat ready to do back to back races, the wind dropped and the fleet was directed back to shore by the Race Officer to have a lunch break. When the Hobie Cat® teams returned to the water for race two, a steady wind had picked up and conditions were solid across the course with single and double stringing on some legs.
At the finish of the race the, back to back flag flew and the cats sat into the wind behind the signals boat. The sky began to darken and rain looked imminent. Some spots fell as the wind gained in strength picking up to 15kts as the Women’s and then the Youth crossed the starting line in a perfect breeze.
The Great Grand Masters and Grand Masters lined up and jostled and shouted between the signals and pin boats and as the hooter sounded the fleet crossed the starting line double trapping in a solid 20kts, which filled the course. Just as the first women were approaching gates for the first time in the 6GO course a huge wind shift occurred with an accompanying short squall hitting the course, which unfortunately caused race three to be abandoned.
Leading the Great Grand Masters is Grahame Southwick and Sharon Rayner from Fiji. Rod and Kerry Waterhouse from Australia lead the Grand Masters. Krystal Weir and Georgia Warren-Myers from Australia lead the Women’s class and Auxence Thomas and Noa Ancian from New Caledonia lead the Youth division.

Day 3
The final day of racing in the Hobie® Great Grand Masters, Grand Masters, Women and Youth Classes in the 2016 Hobie 16 World Championship regatta in Dapeng, China was completed today. With teams waking to loud claps of thunder, flashes of lightning and rain very early this morning the sky looked more promising when buses arrived at the event site to prepare for the day.
While the sky was no longer threatening the wind just wasn’t there either. Nevertheless teams went about their business in anticipation of a start. The wind picked up and rain fell with gusts blowing across the water at 14kts. But there was absolutely no consistency across the course in either wind strength or direction.
After the squall settled so did the breeze and the fleet headed off the beach with around 7kts to play with. Unfortunately, as the Hobie Cats® sat waiting for all of the fleet to arrive around the signals boat, the breeze slowly drifted away and with not enough left to hold a race the Race Officer called a postponement and sent the boats to shore.
To everyone’s dismay the breeze never returned and the day was abandoned late in the afternoon with the scores from days one and two determining the places in the championships.
Auxence Thomas and Noa Ancian from New Caledonia were proud to represent and win the Hobie 16 Youth World Championship for New Caledonia.
Noa said, “During this World Championships the wind was very light but it was very great for us. The conditions here have been very different from New Caledonia where we have 20kt winds, but we prefer these light conditions and that is why we did so well. We are very proud to represent New Caledonia and to win the world championship for our country, that is really great”.
Auxence was very proud and full of gratitude, “Thank you to the Hobie Cat team here at the world championships and to the Hobie Cat Company. Also thank you to the International Hobie Cat Association. This has been a really good championships with excellent conditions that we really like, we just love the Hobie Way of Life, thank you.“
Krystal Weir and Georgia Warren-Myers from Australia won the Hobie 16 Women’s World Championship and were thrilled to have achieved their goal.
“ The Hobie 16 Worlds has been awesome we’ve been lucky to have a small but really competitive fleet to race against. I’ve had my champ crew with me, Georgia. Day one was a bit tricky for us, communication was tricky because we haven’t sailed together much. On day two we changed things a lot and we were able to get it together.“
Georgia said, “ Things started changing in the third race of the first day. We kind of had a bit more discussion and the breeze got up a little bit and we just hit our element, because the only times that we really had sailed together had been in a fair bit of breeze.
When it came up we just went “Ah! yep, we know what we’re doing here” and we just went absolutely nuts. Day two we knew what each other wanted, it all clicked into gear and we had a great time. The 40kts that came up yesterday was awesome fun, we just had the best time in it.
It’s just amazing to be the world champions, that was the goal coming over here, it’s just such a relief really, just a joy.”
Rod and Kerry Waterhouse from Australia won the Hobie Grand Masters International Cup after a previous victory in the Masters Class only a few days ago. Rod shared his thoughts on the event.
“The race was called off for the day which leaves us leading which is fantastic and I’m really pleased to get this one. Once again it was a super tough series and it went down to the wire with three contenders going into the last race. So we are really happy to win the Grand Masters and now we have three days off. Hopefully, we’ll have some wind for the next few days for the Open Qualifiers.”
When asked if he and his crew Kerry were going for the trifecta (winning the Masters, Grand Masters and Open titles), Rod replied.
“We would definitely love that to happen but I know that is going to be a tough ask. We’re just going to be happy to be out there amongst some serious competition and with 50 to 60 boats on the start line it’s a whole new ballgame, so we’re looking forward to it.”
The Hobie Great Grand Masters International Cup winners are Grahame Southwick and Sharon Rayner, representing Fiji. Grahame offered his thoughts on the team’s victory today
“It’s been absolutely great sailing we’ve had a bit of everything we had some really light air and some screaming runs in amongst some really fierce competition. We are really lucky to have managed to get over Tards (Bruce Tardrew) regardless of what event is on, it seems it’s always between Tards and myself, he’s a great competitor. We’re glad we were able to sail in this event, there were some very good sailors in that group, the venue is fantastic and the boats are beautiful with the best sail design I’ve seen in probably any event, so yeah we’re very, very happy.”