Royal Langkawi- hot and bothered and still hoping for some real breeze

by Guy Nowell, Sail-World Asia on 14 Jan 2011 It was another long hot day on the water at the Royal Langkawi International Regatta, but with the bonus that two races were completed for all classes in spite of some seriously fluky conditions.

In the aftermath of yesterday’s protests, all was calm. HiFi’s protest against Evolution Racing and Jelik 5 finishing incorrectly was denied, and protests against the Race Committee for calling (and setting) dodgy short finish lines were rejected too. Even the ‘N’ flag query went the RO’s way, so it was a clean and virgin sheet with which to start the day.

But there wasn’t any wind. Half a hiccough and less than a gasp at the RLYC clubhouse, so it was back to the bar - the gloriously infamous Charlie’s Place – for another coffee and a long hard stare at the AP. 1120 hrs and down came the AP, and once again it was ‘all hands to the dock’ as crews filled boats and headed out to sea – today’s racing was scheduled to be just ‘outside’ the Langkawi archipelago.

From the point of view of the RO, there were two races, and duty was done. From the point of view of this occupant of the camera boat it was a bit of a fizzer. A windward-leeward course on an axis of 030 degrees was set, and then as the Racing class went down the run for the second time the breeze died while a rain squall delivered a drenching to nearby Kuah… and then came back from the opposite direction – really, 180 degrees. Not that it was a great deal of breeze – competitors have suggested a maximum of 8 kts for the day, and most of the time a good deal less than that.

After the stop/start and directional changes of the first race (with shortened courses), the second went off in the opposite direction, but the wind died and this one, too, was shortened. In a timely fashion for some boats, and a less-than-timely fashion for others. Shades of yesterday?

We’re not delivering a tack-by-tack and place-by-place report here – that’s another story (http://www.sail-world.com/Asia/Royal-Langkawi:-wind-plays-havoc-with-racing/79156), and you can hit the results by going to www.langkawiregatta.comn. However, we would like to pay tribute to all those crews who survived a whole day on the grill. If it didn’t mean sunstroke, we’d take our hat off to you. Check out the pictures of these on deck doing the hard yards.

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