Platu One Design Sailing in Thailand History of the Platu (the Platu 25 Story)
A group of Thai businessmen
formed a company known as Phatra Marine Products Company Limited. They wanted to build a marina in Hua Hin on the west coast of the Gulf of Thailand and run a fleet of One Design boats.With connections to Bruce Farr, they asked the famous designer to create an economically-priced, high performance one-design yacht especially suited to the waters in the Gulf of Thailand. The boat would be small and named after a small fish which is a delicacy here in Thailand (“Pla” is Thai for fish and “Tu” is a certain type of fish).
The first Platus were built by McDell Marine in New Zealand and on 19 March 1995 the first 28 were delivered to Pranburi on the Gulf of Thailand and based at the former Phatra Marina. Unfortunately, in 1997, there was a financial crash in Thailand and the development of the Hua Hin marina was stopped.
In 1996, the first Platu 25 One Design Regatta, with 24 entries, known as the Coronation Cup, was held off the coast of Hua Hin. This was a result of the owners wanting to link their regatta to King Rama IX, who was a keen yachtsman. The date, May 5th, commemorated His Majesty the King Rama IX’s Coronation in 1950.
As a result of its successful design Beneteau visited the fleet in Pranburi and decided to buy moulds from McDell Marine and began manufacturing the Beneteau 25 in Europe. They had to make some small modifications to the original boats including a 40mm slimming of the deck to accommodate the road transport rules of most European countries. In 2007, the class was registered with the ISAF and a set of international class rules was produced. Thailand produced an “amendment to International class rules” to accommodate the minor differences between the original Mcdell and the Beneteau Platus (There are now approximately 600 Beneteau 25’s in Europe and Worlds events are attracting up to 100 boats.)
In 2008, Xtreme Sailing Products (XSP) of Singapore bought the original Mcdell moulds and the rights to produce the Platu and Mcdell ceased production. It is ironic that XSP’s first order for 11 Platus (built in Batam) came from New Zealand, where the first Platus were designed. Since then, their boats are being sold all over Europe and are becoming known for their excellent quality.
Previously, the Coronation
Cup – part of the Platu Racing Series – was seen as one of the most prestigious yachting trophies in Thailand. The event was always held in early May, and used to be part of the Top of The Gulf Regatta. Ocean Marina Jomtien (OMJ) recently decided to restore the tradition by holding the May Platus series on the first weekend of May to commemorate the coronation of King Maha Vajiralongkorn (Rama X) on 4th May with plans to get the Coronation Cup sailing again, hopefully by next year.
In summary, the Platu 25 is a sports boat that is an agile, sleek and cost–efficient club racer. The specific design of the Platu 25, and its need for a well-organised crew, that makes it popular for professional & amateur crews to hone their skills & promotes fast, close and exhilarating racing. In recent years OMJ & Platu Thailand have welcomed sailors from Hong Kong, United Kingdom, USA, Latvia, Estonia, Netherlands, Denmark, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Greece, New Zealand & of course Thailand have participated.
The beauty of one-design racing and the short courses is that every race is close with any crew having the chance to win in any given race. You don’t have the disparity in distance between yachts seen in other classes with different boat builds.
This One Design Championship has always provided some of the closest, most exiting racing in the Land of Smiles. Ocean Marina Jomtien and Harbor Master Scott Finsten graciously host the highly competitive World Sailing accredited, International Platu class.
Located just 90 minutes south of Bangkok (BKK) Suvarnabhumi International airport, Ocean Marina Jomtien has world-class facilities & is the largest marina in ASEAN, accommodating a diverse range of marine craft from superyachts to the Platu fleet & dinghy sailing.
Q & A with Peter Winters, co-organizer of the Platu Racing Series
How many events make up the Platu Racing Series? This year there are six events and we are aiming to keep it to six. Having more events means more people can make individual regattas because it’s likely at least one of the weekends won’t have a conflict with their regular sailing schedule. It also works well to have events scattered through the year, so that our European and antipodean friends can escape their respective winters.
The dates have been
chosen to complement the other Asian sailing regattas, where possible. Meaning that someone travelling from abroad can do the Langkawi regatta and an event would fall the following weekend. Same for the Bay Regatta and the Phuket Yacht Club’s Yacht Sales Co Regatta. The September event is a week before the Platu world championships, so a stop in the way to Europe for the Easy Tiger team. The last scheduled event falls just before the Raja Muda regatta.B) How many races make up one event? Kev Scott was the driving force behind the Platus for many years. But we have changed the format slightly. We currently schedule five races on the first two days and then three on the last day, so 13 in total
C) Tell us about the organization and who people should contact if they want to race Platus? Guy Kennard and I took over the organization at the start of 2024. We took the fleet from only three-four boats racing at times to nine boats at Ocean Marina in our first event; we now have 11 Platus out sailing.There is a Facebook page and a website coming. The email contact is: [email protected]. We welcome anyone to come sailing. The series has recently been sailed by many high-end sailors, Olympians, America’s Cup sailors, world champions and TP52 sailors as well. And we do offer coaching services and have professional sailors that offer very competitive prices for sailing in the regattas and coaching. We also have a good network of local amateurs. From young sailors that are keen to race to salty veterans that know a few things and love the Platu fleet.
