The Bombay Harbour Annual Regatta 2005 was held in Mumbai Harbour off the Gateway of India on Saturday, 30th April. The event was held under the burgees of the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, the Colaba Sailing Club and the Bombay Sailing Association. This regatta marks the end of the official sailing season in Mumbai. After this race, the club boats are retired for the duration of the monsoon.

This year, the regatta coincided with the YAI 45th Year regatta. To avoid postponing either one and since the participants were common for both the regattas, it was decided that the 5th Race of the YAI regatta would be the Bombay Harbour regatta.

The regatta was quite a spectacle and the sea splashed with colourful sails of almost 100 Yachts of the following classes: J24, Seabird, Lightning, International 420, Enterprise, Optimist, Cadet Laser, Laser Radial, Hobie 16, 470, Star & Mistral.

The wind was quite light initially but suddenly picked up unexpectedly in the first beat making for good racing conditions.

There was some excitement in the lightning class when Kulwant Singh of the Colaba Sailing Club, who found himself well behind the leaders, tried to catch up by bravely hoisting the spinnaker on a very tight first closereach with a flooding tide. However the lightning spinnaker is very difficult to control on a tight reach in a breeze as his Crew Esai Adidravit found out when he was flung into the water head first. Shahid Basheer (CSC), Pia Sanyal (RBYC) & Gaurav Shinde (CSC), won the race with a leg's lead over the competition to win the Allan Hasseler Trophy.

Among the Seabirds, National champion Sandeep Mhatre, Ninad Mayekar & Gulshan Chunekar of the Colaba Sailing Club won the race comfortably to win the Bombay Town Cup.

The regatta this year saw spectacular participation in so many classes and just goes to show that if we co-ordinate with the other local clubs for such events, we can really increase the levels of participation and thus improve the quality of racing in club events.

Presentations were held at the RBYC Lawns for the season's races and the Chief Guest for the function was Vice Admiral Madanjit Singh?????, PVSM, AVSM, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Naval Command.