The Team - SELANGOR GAPURNA INTERNATIONAL YOUTH MATCH RACING CHAMPIONSHIPS

The Selection was done. There is the team for the Youth Race in Malaysia and we wish them well. It her what they have to say about the Regatta.


Renfred Tay










What are you feelings towards the Youth Championship?
I have mixed feelings abt going for this. although I've match raced before, I was never the helm. The helm is always under a lot of pressure during match racing, hope I'd be able to withstand it, and not worry abt crew work by the time we get there. Crew work has to be perfect for match racing otherwise there its not match racing.

What would this Championship mean to you?
Doing well for this will give me more confidence as a helmsman, and hopefully help me further my sailing aspirations

Why far have you prepared yourself?
Been training a lot, however it is difficult for the full team to be able to train together all the time due to work commitments. Match racing requires a lot of coordination among the whole team. So we'll just training as much as possible together and hopefully we'll see progress as time unfolds.

What are your wishes toward this event?
I wish to win! Hahaha

Who will you miss when to go there?
I will miss my mum and dad. And sailing in the last day of western circuit regatta.

Wong Dan Chi

I can't help but marvel at the opportunities that SMUsailing has given me since I joined just one summer ago. Match racing is something r.e.a.l.l.y new to me and it involves a fair bit of mugging to do *haha* Do so hope to prepare as much as I can, as we can, to properly enjoy match racing and have a great learning experience to share with the sailing family! :) much love!





Timothy Tio







It is my utmost honour to be representing SMU at the Selangor Gapurna International Youth Match Racing Championships 2007. To be chosen for this overseas regatta fills me with great pride and I will be looking to do well for each and every race. I see this Championship as a great opportunity to put my skills learned thus far to the test. With abundant experience from the RSYC Regatta, Western Circuit Regatta and Singapore Straits Regatta, I believe I will be able to put the lessons learnt to good use during the Championship. Coupled with the fact that I am going up to Selangor with very capable team mates, the entire team is brimming with confidence. I look forward to a very successful regatta and ultimately hope to bring back the top prize for SMU!

Dawn Phung

Match racing has always been something of a mystery to me (since I never understood it fully...until now, hopefully) and this competition offered me a chance to learn from the best (hello, wearn haw; hello, renfred). My aim for this championship is to learn how to match race, improve my sailing, and... winning would of course be a bonus. I'm also a little apprehensive since our team hasn't had much time to train together, but still, I have high hopes of doing well and working well as a team. And I will miss all of you and I will miss being around for the last day of Western! Good luck to allll of us. :)





John Lui

Updating soon....

Hiking hard.. a pictorial spread

remember what wearnhaw told us last weekend? well here's some (sexy) pictures of sailors hiking hard. Oh yeah baby. hurhur.

J24 worlds in Mexico

very expensive sailboat with very professional (read: wellpaid) sailors

"i think i can't feel my legs anymore"

whatever works

hey baby, how are you doing?

and this is what happens if you don't hike hard enough :)

HAVE A GREAT FRIDAY everyone!

The Heat is on.. It's racing time

the heat is on... RSYC count down.... 8 more days to the race!

Things we gotta do:

1. Check our boat properly for equipment problems.

2. Train Hard

3. Train Harder

4. Give it your best

5. Win....

=)

back by popular demand, Rapmeister DJ Dr.Zee

i don't know what he was smoking when he wrote this, but this is a work of art.

ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, i give you "the story of IRC race 2".

Race 2: Race to the hood

The horn went and as like all you chill out fellas know, we were rockin' to the beat. There were cries on the boat as we were wondered whether those were gunshots or to signal the start of the next race. We sure did not want to be caught off guard.

"What does a raised blue and white flag mean? Isn't it only one race?"

Who said it was immaterial but what we knew was that crew rabbitz was back in the game.

We rushed to the scene close to the start line, this time we stuck to the uncrowded port side as we were determine not to cross the line last again.

30 seconds to the start. Time was a tickin’ and the boat was cruisin’. Unfortunately we spotted a line of boats cruisin’ down the start line on starboard tack while we were on the port tack hence we had to choice but to give to those niggas' coming down the East side. We had no idea we would be out manouved in this manner. What resulted was a series of chaos as boats cruised by on our left and right as we tacked and tacked to avoid collision.

Within a minute we are all left for dead, once again last and motionless as all the winds and momentum was taken from our sails. Battered and bruised but not walkin’ with a limp, we promised to exact revenge for the brotherhood and so we pumped up the mains and headed down the starboard in chase of two(two boats in front that is yoz).

Position-wise we were done for, the two ahead had bigger sails and we were covered once again we were given the dirrrty windz. We had planned to tack below the two and perhaps take advantage of the clearer route on the port. However someone must have been watching, for just was we were to do so, a gap opened up between the two boats which we were able to exploit. Like the love for fast cars, we beared down to gain speed and went in-between the two where were able to gain a tacit advantage due to the winds blowing through.

Brother Tim predicted the one behind the two would tack away eventually and this would be our opportunity to tack alongside, gain clear winds and perhaps point a little higher to overtake the tacking boat. We lacked the guns but through this massive insight, everything went as planned and we found ourselves cruisin’ down the plain in chase of the chicks far ahead (note: I was fairly blind so I do not really know if those bikini girls were chicks).

When we got to the layline, we wanted to play it cool. There were shouts of “playing it safe” but you and I know we can never win playing safe. We overshot the layline by 5 boat lengths and in the hood no mistakes can be tolerated. I mean A.L.V.I.N knows his shitz but one mistake like that can cost us the whole mutha f.ing race. The backtracking did it damage and we lost a couple of places which was crucial in this race.

The way back to the hood was filled with tactical insights from A.L.V.I.N. He told us there was a wind chokehold and hence the zigzag motion of pointing when its light and and bearing when it heavy downwind. If you didn't get datz you need to go back to school sucker. The jibes were pretty rough like the hangover you get after a night out in da club. But it was still cool as we were able to recover quick.

I would like to say that the way back up was like a disco inferno but the truth is the way up was tame but by no means lame. During this period we consolidated our arms as we approached the layline. This time round A.L.V.I.N decided to use the over the shoulder method which requires you to look over the shoulder on your right before deciding to tack it to the layline. It was a huge gamble but we were ready risk it and get rich or die trying.

I was eaves’ on a conversation between Shi and Fio and it was pretty cool. Shi was pretty thirsty and wanted a drop from the box. Their talk went a little something like this.

Shi: “Can I get a…”

Flo: “What? What?”

Shi: “Can I get a…”

Flo: “What? What?”

Shi: “Can I get a bottle of water?”

Rounding the mark, everything was in order and we managed to pull up the spin and get movin’ in two boat lengths. It was the last leg and immortality laid ahead.

We all thought it would be over just like dat
Suddenly the winds stopped turning boats into cats

Platu was light and cruising down fast
1,2,3 were the boats we pass

We had ALVIN as the helms, there was no worry
Loo Wee at the trims; experience our fury.

A jibe to the left, a jibe to the right
The crews they hollered but they were just getting smaller
It was too late as they tired their thing
The finish was in sight and so the championship ring.

So just in case you hommies didn’t hear it right
I will say it again so remember to hold it tight
The derigging bros are comin’ to get ya
We will rock your boats and we’ll surely pawn ya.

So terrorise us at the R.S.Y.C
cause all you little fags are gonna be D.E.A.D
Crew rabbitz in the house when we secure the 4
Come next we’ll be first while the compe’s on the floor.

word.

IRC Race Report: Shengli's story

Race 1

The ominous looking storm clouds never threatened, and by the start of race 1, the wind died down to a steady breeze with the characteristic shifty wind patterns off the Tuas coast. Race officer Gordon Maxted and Jerry the RM Marina Manager took advantage of the increasingly assertive SW monsoon winds to lay a short (approx 1nm) windward leeward course along the length of the straits. The tide was ebbing, and from the start of the race day to the end saw the current steadily increase in strength from the 2nd link out to towards Merombong.

Shengli, with Winfrid on helm, Zhenghan on trim, Junjia on box, Tse Tiann on mast and Ben on bow went for a conservative start, eschewing the favored starboard end for clear wind further down the line. Good prestart positioning up current allowed Shengli to stay close to the line in the fickle winds and merciless tide, giving us a decent start. We were slightly slow to the line, so perhaps timing needs to be improved. Ben doved back from the bow position with a good 10 seconds to go, shouting “full-on trim, go go go” – that was how much buffer we had approaching the final countdown (but of course, it might simply be that his weight on the pointy end was slowing the boat down too much). Still, a decent final approach on what is probably the most crowded start line the helms & team has started in. With more practice, the timing will be cut down.

Soon after the start, perhaps the inexperience of sailing with bigger boats showed and we slowed significantly by being surrounded by Sumatra, Foxy Lady and Wings. More concentration is the order of the day, especially in the first 100 seconds after the start (as many a coach has mentioned before) – the temptation to pinch too high to avoid a leebow boat or foot too low in the shadow of an approaching boat to windward must be avoided.. just sail fast and tack away if you need to or can. This is mostly applicable to IRC racing, one design racing doesn’t quite have these problems.

Overall, upwind performance was quite ok. Played the shifts well to claw back to midfleet, and the team were aware of the increasing ebbing tide and took advantage of this by sailing out to the right (deeper water) and gaining that extra bit of speed over ground. A quick glance told us that SMUve was behind us! This gave the team a boost as we were psyched to try to beat SMUve on line honors and try to take the win on IRC.

We extended our lead into the upwind mark, and rounded without much incident – except for this one lesson: no matter how fast one hoists & pulls in the clew, to get that satisfying “pop” requires teamwork and coordination between the box and trimmer! And this was a lesson we learnt very fast. Winfrid and Zhenghan communicated well during the downwind legs, pointing up in the lulls to get speed & soaking low in the gusts to get VMG. However, we hit a few holes going close to shore on the downwind leg… the victim of the infamous Tuas roulette wheel of wind, close to the blocky industrial buildings and shoreline. SMUve did a good job steaming downwind, and every second saw the Big Red Spin of SMUve inch closer. Good job to them, for at the bottom rounding they managed to gain some ground, catching Roo & Rainbow Dream (who were between us), but still rounding behind us.
We had the plan to go right and protect the right because we anticipated the right shift, so were happy to see SMUve go left. However, it seemed that SMUve had managed to resolve their speed issues and were in full flight, worthy of their superior rating. Still, we were doing fine by bouncing them to the left once or twice and still managed to maintain our (slowly decreasing lead). At this time, a series of unfortunate incidents happened… First, we were too busy caught chasing a gust all the way to the left of SMUve, thus allowing them to head right. They seemed to like the left though, so pretty soon we were on a port-starboard approach, us back on port heading back out to our favorite right and SMUve heading left. In what seemed to be a close crossing to close, we did a crash tack to starboard to prevent a collision… which saw us being right ahead of SMUve! Looks like it wasn’t an imminent collision, and that the cross was actually on. This prompted SMUve to tack out of the cover where they promptly gained in a shift. Well, this was the defining moment because from then on SMUve pulled ahead to take the lead till the finish. No worries though because this is a good learning about judging crossings and also about tactics.

The rest of the upwind and the final downwind saw us consolidate our lead over Roo and Rainbow Dream. The last downwind was considerably better for us as we managed to track down most of the gusts and overtake Roo & Rainbow Dream. In what was the final gamble, we decided to head out into the channel because we observed that the current wasn’t directly on the nose, but rather had a slight left to right (from the channel to the shore) vector. After a few unrewarding minutes, we quickly realized our mistake as the current had by then shifted to a full on the nose direction and we immediately gybed back. Still, it seemed that we didn’t suffer too much because the boats close to shore had limp spinnakers while ours was full the entire leg. So I guess it seemed that it’s a fine line between going inshore to avoid adverse currents, and going too far inshore and getting suckered by the wind holes.

We finally crossed in 8th place, behind SMUve by 1 position… but still it was a good race in that we were now feeling more confident for the second race.

Race 2

And what a race this was! The starting plan was still the same, but perhaps emboldened by our decent start in the first race, we became a bit greedy and tried to start closer to the favored. The timing was spot on… or so we (and half the fleet) thought! The ebbing tide had finally come into full swing and as the minutes counted down the entire fleet were being swept over fast! It didn’t help that out of nowhere came… FOXY LADY on our leeward hip. Cries of “Up! Up! Up!” from the Foxy crew caused us to panic…and resulted in us heading into irons and doing an accidental tack, onto port with the huge Wings coming at us on starboard. They were clear astern of us before our tack, and were making a maneuver to come to the windward stern of us because of the uppity Fox. They didn’t think that the Fox would cause us to tack and so they had to bear hard to avoid us and Foxy Lady. Not a hot start as the tack caused us to OCS and stall on the line. We put our heads down and quickly dipped and started promptly. It wasn’t the best start, but we were determined to climb out of this hole and take advantage of the stronger winds and long-ish course to catch up.

This time around, we managed to maneuver into clear air and more concentration saw us reap the rewards of better boat speed. Mark roundings were tighter this time too. Overall, we did better this race, and the results showed it. 6th place out of 11th, an improvement of 2 spots. Still, we can do better, and we will do better the next time.

Overall, a good day out on the water. The IRC Races showed us how fun and tightly knit the sailing community is, and this has served to whet our appetites for success at the coming RSYC regatta.

IRC Race Report: The view from SMUve

Racing sundays

Race Format: 2 upwind and downwind sasauges

Sail Boat: Platu Smoove

Race Team: Fiona (Box), Louis(Trimmer), Zhi Xin(Mains), Alvin(Skipper/Helm), Shiwei(Mast), Tim(Bow)


RACE 1
Wind conditions: Light-Medium

We started off race one with high morale. It was exciting as we had never came together as a team to sail before. It was especially worrying as our mains, zhixin had never did that position before. The rest looked on nervously as Alvin explained the role to him considering the possibilities of wearing life jackets.

The practise run was horrible, held 10 minutes before the race proper. The tacks did not go well, ropes were caught, we could not raise the spin properly. Morale was dipping.

HORN! 5 mins to the start. Transit point was already taken and our strategy was to start off from the starboard mark as the wind and current favoured that particular side. We took off down the start on a beam ridge with the plan of tacking and coming back within 1.30 secs.

10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1! The race has started! Unfortunately we were 6 boat lengths behind the start. A combination of fat boats, mistiming, poor boat speed(no thanks to the useless mains), being passive and keeping far off the line ensured the pretty crappy start.

2 minutes later, YEAH! We crossed the line. Reality strikes when we realise we are the last boat to pass the starting line.

We tack out to the starboard area of the course where we believe we will get more winds. Tim pointed out that most boats stayed inland to reduce the current drift which is pushing use back. We decide to take that gamble of going right as the larger boats would cover our sail and the winds appear to be stronger on our tack.

Just not pointing high enough. Larger boats are covering us. We have no WIND!

"We are on the layline we are tacking now!" Alvin exclaimed 30 boat lengths from the upwind mark. Unfortunately that was WRONG!

6 boat lengths to the mark. "Errr, I think we cannot make it." Louis exclaimed ogre-like.

"TACKING NOW!"

"We are tacking again, raise the pole after the tack"

2 boat lengths from the mark, "ShIt! I cannot see the mark."

"Eh why cannot fly ah?" Louis says, talking to himself even though he is surrounded by 5 other people on a small boat.

Three mins later, it is revealed that the spin is not fully raised as Shiwei is way too light. Further examination of the next windup mark confirms this as she looks like she is struggling with a giant bird and she pumps away with her tiny fists like outstretch hands to the heavens.

Hooray, down the run we managed to get by 3 boats. Our superior tactics of pointing and bearing and taking a haute angle obviously worked. No such luck up wind though. We rounded the mark with 2 right in front. Following which, we had no choice but to tack away due to the leewind effect(I might be wrong here).

UPWIND: Tim nonchalently states, "we are going to collide with Roo."

"TACK NOW! UPZ! UPZ! UPZ!" For a moment I honestly thought that alvin became a boom box. This was a very awkward moment. Roo was 30 cm away from us and sailing on a starboard tack. We could not do anything as we were pointing at the maximum. Thus we decided to just stay the course and hope for them to tack away. In that time span, both boats were very silent and I saw Louis sending daggers to the other boat. I think his ogre instincts were acting up. Rabbit was obvious to everything and grinned away. I think she treats the box like her home thus the happiness.

"Won't breach one la!" zhixin foolishly states, he obviously has not been on the platu while Lip Hang was the mains. "DUUUUUMP!" the crew screamed in desperation. "Okay okay, I got it, I got it, oops!" The idiot was struggling with fingers and feets being unable to coordinate his action, someone really ought to sign him up for a ballet class with a pink tutu. Throughout the upwind sail, there were more instances of this foolhardy everytime the gush blew and zhixin fumbled with his fingers and hands.

We cross the finish line with 3 boats behind us. It was a smoove satisfying sail (pun intended).


RACE 2
Wind conditions: Light

You should have been there. It was a great sail.

See you next week

written by Zhixin

Raffles Marina IRC Race (July)

hot off the press:

light winds, flat waters. 2 short windward-leewards (approx 0.8 nautical miles per leg). 2 races. all the big boys were out today with 11 boats on the line, including foxy lady, sumartra, panic!, wings, loaded, aquavit, roo, rainbow dream etc. tough racing, biggest & most competitive fleet racing so that both teams have encountered so far, and we did well today. good job guys!

R1:
Shengli 8th /11 boats
SMUve 7th/11 boats

R2:
Shengli 6th/11 boats
SMUve 4th/11 boats (well done!)

On Shengli were the bandits: Winfrid (helm), Zhenghan (trim), Junjia (sexy box), Tse Tiann (mast), Ben (old man bow)

And on SMUve were the pirates: Alvin (helm), Zhixin (mains trim), Louis (jib trim), Fiona (box), Shiwei (mast), Tim (bow)

Race reports coming soon!