Royal Langkawi International Regatta 2016 – back in the sunshine

by Guy Nowell, Sail-World Asia on 13 Jan 2016 Grey at breakfast time, but sparkling by 0930 when the first sequence started. Whitecaps across Bass Harbour, and 13kts of breeze to get the proceedings under way on time. Windward-leeward races for IRC Racing, longer harbour races for the various cruising classes, and combination of the two for the remainder.

It’s been a while since Oi! failed to step up to the podium on any given day at the RLIR, so yesterday’s absence was unusual. A protest and a DSQ didn’t help. Clearly keen to put things right, Oi! was quick off the start, fast up the beat, and altogether slippery enough to cruise home third on the water behind Alive and Jelik and first on corrected time. Millennium Racing was almost two minutes back for second place. Positions were reversed in the second w/l race, with Ray Roberts & Co taking the bullet. Simple calculations say that when the IRC Racing fleet goes past five races, and the drop comes in, Oi! is going to be back in contention.

Yesterday it was Fujin (Mick Tilden), Uranus (Royal Malaysian Navy) and Emagine (Scott Bradley) scoring the places in IRC 1, and today MegaZip (Khramtsov Sergey/Nikiforov Evgenii) got up to speed and joined the party. Emagine is still wishing for a little less breeze (Sssh… don’t say that, please), but with two (more) first places today for Fujin, the men in red are proving hard to beat. The Platu 25s in the Sportsboats division also raced windward/leeward courses; hard work in today breeze.

Bass Harbour runs mostly NE to SW, with bit of banana out to the east at the top end. It’s a long corridor that feeds the breeze down the line as long as it doesn’t go much past 090 degrees - and it is wide enough to allow a Race Officer to set a course that is mostly windward/leeward but looks like long-legs-and-islands so as not to frighten the cruisers. Courses 14 and 17 are actually triangles, but seriously ‘flat’ triangles, and that’s what was signalled for the Multihull, Club, Ocean Rover, White Sail classes and the second race for IRC 2.

Checking the results, you could be excused for thinking that nearly everyone apart from IRC Racing had the batting order all sorted out over breakfast. Take a look at today’s placings:
IRC 1
Fujin 1, 1
MegaZip 2, 2
Uranus 3, 3
IRC 2
Mata Hari 1, 1
Phoenix 2, 2
Foreign Affair 3, 3
Sportsboats
RLYC 1, 1
ATM 2, 2
SMU 3, 3
Multihulls
Wow 1, 1
Allegro 2, 2
ImageASIA Nina 3, 3
Ocean Rover (two days)
Eveline 1, 1, 1
My Toy 2, 2, 2

In the Media Centre we are running a book on tomorrow’s runners. We’ll let you know.

To see full results go to: www.langkawiregatta.com

Meanwhile, here are some more pictures:

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