Royal Brunei Sailing Regatta 9-11/11/18
This is always a highlight of the sailing calendar, as we don’t often get to race against other sailors, nor do we often have many boats on the water. The Sarawak and army are great sailors, and there's always a quite competitive atmosphere.
Day 1: Long Race.
In the past, I haven’t done so well in the long race, but this year I placed fifth, which gives a double score of 10 pts. The conditions were excellent, mostly flat water, and enough wind to build up some awesome speed. Most of the sailors today were from Sarawak, as the Yacht Club sailors were mostly busy. The course consisted of a short upwind start, followed by a long reach downriver towards the green panchang. The 420s were able to get their spinnakers out on this leg, so they were the first to round the buoy. At this point, I was in the first pack of five, with another Radial and some lasers. The next leg took us across the bay to the bumblebee, then back upwind again towards Muara Basar. After that, it was straight to the finish line. I lost my lead on the. other Radial at some point in the beat upwind, but still kept it close.
Day 2: Short Races
We had three short races, made up of triangle/sausages. More of the RBYC crew was here today, which was good. I started off badly but got better as the day progressed, ending up coming second in the final race. It is always good to see the techniques and tricks of the Sarawak sailors and copy them, in the spirit of race sailing. None of the two-man boats did so well today on the shorter course, but they still placed in the top ten.
As is tradition, we finished the day with a big dinner for all the sailors, with much discussion of the races in between us. The junior sailors were also there, who had finished before us. One protest had been raised, which ended in one of the 420s being disqualified from the second race. Being their worst race, however, it didn’t affect them too much. The top prize went to (to nobody’s surprise) the Sarawak team, who thoroughly deserved the win. Looking forward to next year now.
