Matt Allen's Beneteau First 44.7 Ichi Ban in action during day 4 of the 23rd Phuket King's Cup Regatta Guy Nowell

Commodore Matt Allen achieved a clean sweep of IRC1 division in the 23rd Phuket Kings Cup Regatta, scoring eight wins in his Beneteau First 44.7 Ichi Ban.

Allen successfully defended his 2008 title and was an extremely happy man. “The boat is going well. The one time we got ourselves buried in the first longer race, we dug ourselves out. The rest of the time we seemed to be picking the shifts well. The boat was changing gears nicely. We seemed to be right down to pretty light airs and when we had the windier stuff, we were still leading the pack,” said Allen

“A lot of people think these boats are light air fliers, but they go up to the higher wind range without too much trouble.

“It was nice to come out with a win again in the second last race. We then decided not to do the last race given the wind conditions.

“Our boat has done six regattas, so it is time to do a bit of repair and maintenance,” concluded Allen.

CYCA Member Ray Roberts, sailing his TP52 Evolution Racing, finished third in the Racing Division on countback, after concluding the regatta equal second with Frank Pong’s Jelik II. The winner of the Racing Division was Neil Pryde’s Hi-Fi.

The last two King’s Cup, Pryde has lost first place on a count back. This time he takes hold of the trophy with no doubts as to the ability of his boat, his crew and himself.

'This is a great result. We won by a pretty good margin in the end. It wasn’t as hard as we expected although it was a tough regatta from a nerves point of view. It was a tough regatta with difficult conditions.'

Even with stronger winds kicking in earlier in the regatta Pryde said he would have been confident of Hi-Fi still being in there. 'Ray and Evolution Racing looked pretty good today. We were obviously sailing conservatively today. We didn’t push it too hard and we used a smaller jib, a number four. I think if we had really been going for it we would have been with them,' Pryde said.

For more information log on to http://www.kingscup.com/index.cfm?eid=849

By Tracey Johnstone with edits from Jennifer Crooks

	Ray Roberts' TP52 Evolution Racing in action on Day 4 of 23rd Phuket King's Cup Regatta Guy Nowell