PRESS RELEASE RACE DAY 3
LANGKAWI, 9 JANUARY 2020 – Langkawi turned on some champagne sailing weather for the much anticipated “Round Island” race.
The PRO set up a start gate on the east coast so that slower yachts could start earlier. The Club and White Sail classes could start at any time between 0745and 0845 and record the time they crossed their start line. The early starters benefitted from stronger winds and some excellent times were recorded with Eveline providing the big highlight of the day by winning the White Sail and Classic Challenge Classes convincingly!
The early start gate closed at 0845 and the warning signal for the Racing and IRC1 classes, who started together, was sounded at 0930 with the wind recorded at 17 knots blowing from the north east (50 degrees). These classes were set to race on course 22, a longer course than all other classes who raced on course 21.
The Racing and IRC1 classes were followed without delay by IRC2, Sports Boats and Club Cruising classes and finally the Multihull class was sent on their way. All boats were racing by 0945!
Wind speed was recorded in Kuah Harbour at 20 knots from 55-60 degrees at around 1100 hours and then slowly dropped but still leaving a good breeze for the last boats finishing.
Team Hollywood again topped the Racing class with the fast elapsed time of two hours twenty three minutes and enjoyed some really first class sailing. Second in this class was THA 72 followed by Windsikher.
The competition between Meraki and Char Chan in IRC1 was intense today with Meraki gaining top spot by only 25 seconds on corrected time!
Phoenix again took first place in IRC2 beating BeiHai China with The Blue Angel taking third spot.
‘MSA-MSN’ skippered by Muhammad Uzzair in the closely contested Sportboats class topped the scoring for the round island race adding to his two previous victories giving him a well-earned hat-trick!
In the multihull class the diminutive Fetz Ma trimaran skippered by Austrian Dr Gerhard Pils secured first place today over the much bigger catamaran Allegro helmed by Bob McIntyre.
Marikh took the honors in the club class whilst Keith Miller’s Sade 2 reveled in the conditions today and secured a strong second place.
Chantique ran a valiant race today and scored line honors in the White Sail class but as mentioned the real highlight of the day was the victory of the Classic Challenge contender ‘Eveline”. Bravo!
The last boat finished the course at around 1415 hours and the entire fleet was jubilant with the days brilliant weather and great wind for a successful round island race.
