Match Racing Vladivostok - Report

As you may be aware the Indian Match Race team comprising of the undersigned, Rajesh Dhulaji, Neeraj Sharma and Seshagiri Rao are sailing 3 match racing events in Russia. We won the first event on the circuit namely the 7 foot cup international match race at Vladivostock knocking out the holders 3-1 in the finals.

Before I go on with my story of the event let me thank all the sailors who have been pushing me and my crew on the water(with the exception of Aashim who shattered me by beating me in the 1st two matches we sailed....comprehensively!) during our clinics and obviously that is the way forward.

We landed up here after a shattering 29 hours of travel and got onto the boat(Platu 25 which is pretty similar to the Beneteau 7.5) the next day in rainy, cold and windy conditions. The practise day was pretty counterproductive as survival conditions on a tipsy boat with crew who aren't used to changing classes isn't really a confidence booster! However we slogged it out and worked our way enough into the boat to be able to look out of the boat whilst racing.

The format of the event was a full round robin of the ten invited boats, followed by a round robin of the top six from the first round and a finals where the top 2 would sail off in a best of 5 for the 1st place and the 3rd and 4th would sail off in a best of 3 for the 3rd place.

20th Jul
The 1st day of racing saw great sailing conditions with a steady 10 knots at 8am when we had the 2nd skippers briefing. Sailing got underway and as usual my jinx of sailing a bad/nervous first race continued to haunt me with us whipping the top russian at the pre start only to be completely off the pace thro the race losing the lead(which was close to 6 bl at the start as we had stuffed him off the committee at the stbd end) on the 2nd upwind leg and eventually losing it. The day was great from the organisational point of view as the ran 12 flights of 3 races each(36 RACES!!!) from 9-6PM. We didn't have a brilliant day losing 2 and winning 5 out of the 7 races we sailed. Maxim the defender from Russia and Gibbs of Aus had good days winning all six of their matches.

21 Jul
After a terrible night where none of us could really sleep due the time lag we went in to the harbour to find complete calm and bright sunshine which finally delayed our start till 3 PM. Got destroyed in both the races that were left in the 1st round robin by the Aus and Jap sailors and qualified 4th even on points and behind the Japanese. Must mention that agaist the Aussie we gave him a penalty in the pre start and started ahead of him before making all the basic mistakes in the book to lose the race by over 10 B/L. Great..... at least we got into the second round! The draw for the second round was carried out with the wind lightening up on the water and the round of 6 commenced at 1845(Good sailing time at home which is 51/2 hours back!). Won both our matches one against Stepanian(Russia) and Gibbs(Aus) before sailing was abandoned at 2100hrs due to shifty winds.

Then of course was one of the highlights of the trip after a looong day when we were invited by the Commodore of the Yacht Club to his private traditional Russian Sauna which honestly cooled us off and gave us our first decent nights sleep!

22Jul
Great day for sailing with the wind gusting 18-22 Kts and we went out at 10 only to get back into the harbour as we snapped a jib halyard.....the waiting game began all over again. At 12 the RC decided to race at the harbour mouth to get better viewership and we won 2 out of 3 races sailed making our score for the semis(round of 6) 5 sailed-4won-1lost. The one we lost again was to the defending Russian guy who led from start to finish this time around. He'd won all 5 of his matches and Gibbs was 3rd, and Toya(Japan) 4th setting up the final line up. Drew for boats once again and we were ready to go already having bettered last years result of a 4th place at the same event. We got off the blocks greatly and everything seemed to fall in place with us winning the 1st 2 pre-starts clean and winning thye races from start to finish albeit by just a length in the 2nd one. Then the wind came down to 4 kts just near the start time and we got stuffed as we were trailing at the pre-start and started 4 lenghts behind. We clawed our way back into the race but finally Maxim picked the right end of the finish to stay ahead by less than half a length.

The 4th race ended up with us getting an even start with him on our hip and holding on till we closed the lay line. When we thought we could cross towards the port side we tacked only to suffer a penalty for our misjudgement..........we were now ahead but a penalty down. Stayed like that and we went into the 1st L mark overlapped inside with pressure filling in from the left. Great, rounded the mark, he tacked to clear his air and made the mistake of going on too long and enabling separation. Hit the pressure that came with a swing left and crossed over 3 lengths ahead. Now the question was could we complete the penalty....went through with it on the stbd lay line and dialled up on him at the top mark to squeeze in ahead of him yet again. However even though the distance was too close for comfort defended hard gybing god knows how many times to now pick the correct end of the line that he had figured out for us in the previous race. Kept our fingers crossed and pipped him to the finish. We had WON!!

Cheers and have fun on Saturday when you get onto the water and get at each others throats once again.

Best regards
Cdr R Mahesh
Hon Secy MRAI





Please register your e-mail address with us to enable us to inform you when there are major events, races, parties, uploads to the website, etc......