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**Ex-Calif** · 20-08-2009, 23:57

As a preliminary to passage racing - logistics!

Monday - Since we will sail out of Singapore waters someone has to clear immigration. The good news is only the skipper is required.

Tuesday - Pitch up for the race is 5:00am. Race start at 6:00am. Finish is anticipated around 8PM. Smaller boats are bitching because course length means many will not finish in allotted time - what's the point? BTW - It's a long day. Can you all bring some food?

Wednesday - Ooops! Bad news - Everyone has to clear immigration. Send passport details. Good news! The skipper is sending a van to collect each crewperson from their home. Bad news - you are first. Be ready at 4:00am. BTW how's that food coming? Bad news after clearing immigration back in, finish time is looking more like 9PM. Don't like it? Sail faster...

Thursday - No you can't cancel the van, sleep an extra 30 minutes and go on your own. You will mess up our logistics! BTW - Authorities now want work permit and visa details. Send immediately! How's them sammiches coming?

Friday (today's plan) - Leave work early, go buy sammich stuff, attend skipper's meeting, drink with skippers, lose sammich motivation, get home late, wake up at 3am with hangover to make sammiches. Where the hell is my gear? Right, meant to get that ready last night, damn!

Looking forward to it.

**David M** · 21-08-2009, 00:05

Why are they doing these marathon courses that take 14 hours? (provided you have the waterline to finish before the RC goes home.) Geesh, are they trying to discourage people from entering next year?

**Ex-Calif** · 23-08-2009, 21:55

Friday's schedule starts ok - get the sammich makin's and get out to the skippers meeting.

7:00PM - Course discussion, bits and bobs. Some boats will clear immigration Friday night starting at 8PM.

7:45pm - Head to bar. Have a bite to eat.

8:15 - Recall all skippers to the ampitheater. Immigration didn't show. When called they stated that although they had agreed to clear the boats outside normal immigration hours (9am to 5pm) they have changed their mind. Now we are in trouble. Talks of a shortened course but many skippers are already gone. Crews are scattered to the winds. Definitely will be racing by 10am but no passage race for sure.

We decided to not call our crew. We had 2 cars arranged for pick ups around the island and not knowing what the schedule will be it would be better to have everyone at the marina.

The rest of the evening proceeds as planned. Back to the bar, too much refreshment, midnight home, make sammiches, bed by 2:30, wake up 3:30 pick up at 4:00.

We have plenty of time so we make coffee, eat some breakfast and get the boat out around 9. doing a couple of short courses. First is a 3 lap triangle and the second is a long 3 lap sausage.

We have decent conditions and end up with a 3rd in the first race. In the second race we end up in a port/starboard start line protest with 2 other boats. It took 2 days to hear the protest and get a result but at 10:30 last night we were DQ - We had our case and reasons but the committee didn't think so.

The biggest problem was that the crew plan was for a passage race and we had only 7 crew and 2 of them were new to the baot and 2 more are fairly inexperienced. Would no have been an issue on the passage but for windward lewards we like 9 people on the boat. The crew did awesome considering.

Yesterday we had 3 races planned and ended up finishing 2 in great sunny and windy conditions. Same courses as Saturday. We had 2 more crew. Both big guys (one is 6'7" and the other is like 6"5"). It was a lot more fun.

The triangle course favored us again and we got a 2nd in medium/strong conditions.

In the second race we again got into a protest at the start. We might have tacked pretty close to the line and some other boats. We didn't get a great result (probably 5th) so we decided not to defend the protest and retire.

So overall out of 5 races we have 2 twos a three and 2 eights. When we sail rather than get too aggressive we are doing great but the penalties have hurt us quite a bit. We are sitting 5th overall. We have a decent shot at 4th overall and a real outside chance at 3rd. We'll need good conditions and 3 races to have any chance at all.

I am posting a couple of shots of us in action. Sail SIN 1231. Sial GBR 1865 is an Elan 340 that is in our class and we have a pretty good handle on them.

Sail HKG1507 is a First 47 that we are in front of as well.

Tune in next week for the finish!

**Ex-Calif** · 23-08-2009, 22:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by David M

Why are they doing these marathon courses that take 14 hours? (provided you have the waterline to finish before the RC goes home.) Geesh, are they trying to discourage people from entering next year?

Lots of discussion about that as well. Saturday IRC B had 4 boats out of 10 time out in race 1.

To be fair to the committee conditions have been changeable as hell. Southwest winds followed by thunderstorms followed by calm air.

The passage race surely would have been a bit of a marathon.

**Ex-Calif** · 24-08-2009, 05:29

I just noticed they posted some video of the starts. We are in the first scene, second boat. I am not sure the exact sequence ut IRC A and B goes off followed by cats, cruisers, SB3 then J24s.

Pretty cool.

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