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It looked like gloom and doom this morning –grey skies interspersed with even darker masses on the horizon and spits of rain dominating the normally sparkling waters around Langkawi. However the winds in the outer waters were inviting with 9-12 Knots from ENE again. Start for the Racing Class nearly needed a postponement as HI FI (Neil Pryde) snagged the starting ling buoy and dragged it to where he wanted it! HI FI kindly restored it to the proper position for the Pin Boat.

Nearly all classes were assigned the same windward/leeward course, differing only in number of laps to take it. Ocean Rover had a triangle to sail covering about 9 miles. The IRC2 and Sports Boats had a combined start which put 11 boats heading for the start line together. In the midst of the action and confusion MATA HARI ( Vincent Chan) took an individual recall.

Club Cruising and Ocean rover also had a combined start. EVELINE (Dato’Richard Curtis/Trevor Richard) along with WARISAN DUYONG (Tropical Yacht S/B) and BAIANA (Joao Hennings) actually arrived at the racing venue after everyone else had crossed. No sweating recalls among all those busy boats for those guys!

By now the whole course was dotted with spinnakers in a gaily colored parade flowing down the race course to converge with those racers who had already rounded the leeward mark and were beating their way back to weather. It was marvelous to watch the interaction between boats as the racers came weaving their way through those in other classes. KATSU (Ben Copely) crossed the line first, followed by JING JING (Rick Pointon) for the IRC2, and then JELIK 2(Frank Pong) took line honors for Racing Class.

By the time all classes had fished with the first race the sun was peeking out from under the haze. A not so bright prospect was the diminishing wind strengths. Shorten course was called for Club Cruisng, ending their day of racing. All the other boats were milling about with the AP flag keeping them in holding pattern until the next starting series could be determined. The action got hot and heavy along the start line in Race #2. Three boats were over the line early – JELIK 2, HI FI and Navy Utarid (Ishak Jab) causing an interesting pattern of crisscrossing among the Racing boats.

Fluky winds made shortening courses advisable for all classes at different marks. Thus what was expected to be a boisterously windy day, dropped into the nice and manageable category, then slowly sank in to the not even possible side of things. Well – tomorrow is another day. Everyone put your order in for your perfect wind conditions and we’ll see what turns up tomorrow!