Rockal Evans and his team-mates battled their way to a second successive podium finish in the Thailand Platu Championship at the weekend.

The Bermudian sailor served as tactician on-board British helmsman Colin Simonds’s team that finished runner-up to Australian rival Chris Way in the sixth and final stage of this year’s series.

Evans and his colleagues were tied for second with Malaysian Rolf Heemskerk, three points adrift of leader Way, heading into the final day of the regatta hosted by Ocean Marina Jomtien. They won two of the last three races contested in the Plateau 25 keelboat to finish strongly.

However, it still was not enough as Way’s team held on to pip their nearest rival for the title by a solitary point as a fifth place showing in the sixth race of the eight-race series came back to haunt.

Evans, who now resides in Sydney, was pleased with the outcome despite coming up just shy of what would have been a second straight victory in the series after winning the previous stage with a race to spare.

“This is the first event for me as a professional sailing outside of Australia so very happy with our results as a team,” he told The Royal Gazette.

“I am also very happy with myself as far as managing the tactician role and staying calm when we were fighting back and also defending our leads when we had to and making some really good tactical decisions on the race course.”

Playing the light and shifty breezes, which forced the cancellation of the second day of the three-day regatta and a delayed the start of the final day of racing, proved critical for the fleet to stay in contention for honours.

“We had really shifty and light winds the first day but somehow we got some good scores fighting back each race from a really bad start,” Evans said.

“The second day was cancelled because there was no wind and then the last was very tricky again; light winds and massive shifts like 90 degree sometimes. Actually the racecourse changed 180 degrees between the first and second race.”