VOLVO Singapore Straits Regatta, Day 1
Photos courtesy of www.straitsregatta.com

After an excellent buffet dinner at Raffles Marina on Tuesday night, the VOLVO Singapore Straits Regatta, the 9th in the series, kicked off today under sunny skies and in fresh breezes in open waters off Tuas View.

The 23 boats in 3 classes raced windward leeward courses beating almost directly into the strong ebb tide. Racing A, the big fast boats had to do 5 rounds, the slightly slower boats in Racing Class B had to do 4 rounds and the 2 completely different yachts in the PY race had to do 3 rounds.

The PY class, which will be joined by more boats at Nongsa was made up of the well loved local classic Dondgan Sayang, skippered by Joe Lombardo and built in Terengganu by RSYC past commodore Teo Eng Tat and the ginormous, luxurious, Swan, Irvmiren.

Dondang Sayang, the name means lullaby in Peranakan speak, started under reefed main in the fresh conditions and sailed a steady race to beat Irvmiren who had a number of problems to solve. Her first problem was the loss of her main halyard at the start. This she resolved by simply sailing under her genoa alone, which rig still allowed her to outpoint and sail through most of Racing Class B. She also had problems with her spinnaker and only managed a hoist on the later runs.

Talking of problems it seems that quite a number of crews were still a mite rusty after the Christmas and New Year celebrations. Methinks that Gordon Maxted managed to collect a goodly number of "down-down" candidates, so many in fact that I feel secure in mentioning just a few of those which I noticed without jeopardising Gordon's element of surprise.

In Racing B the winner Xen@ and runner up Platu seemed to sail good races without significant error. The same can not be said however of Steve Walker in Next Page who having had a good contest with level rated Shoon Fung Too decided to call it a day after the third round but had to rejoin the race when he saw Shoon Fung Too continue into the final round. To be charitable, Next Page might have been disconcerted by Pla Loma's earlier antics at the top mark. The breeze seems to have been a little stiff for the J24's to perform to their usual standard or were they too suffering from a long lay off?

The first start was Racing Class A and Stella, skippered by Warwick Downes was the only boat to read the conditions correctly making an excellent start near the pin end with plenty of time to tack onto port and into clear wind. Unfortunately for Stella, a front runner for the Perpetual Cup after her good performances at the Raja Muda and King's Cup she became entangled with the mooring line of the weather mark and never managed to regain her place. Such incidents have happened before in Singapore, a situation not unrelated to the need to lay marks in deep water and the big tides of the new moon at the winter solstice. Indeed one hears that other boats endeavoured a repeat performance.

It was a pleasure to see familiar boats Karakoa of the Philippines and Yo! from Malaysia take the first two places, not to mention Passaya, the sleek silver Farr 40 from Thailand in third place. Check out their crew's rigs as the week goes on.

In all an excellent first day, we especially appreciated the ice cold Heinekens on arrival at RSYC and look forward to completely different racing on tomorrows passage to Nongsa. The dinner & prize presentation took place at Indochine Waterfront along Singapore River, a co-sponsor of the Regatta.