From the 29th of April till the 1st of May, Mumbai Harbour was awash with colourful sails celebrating 45 Years of the Yachting Association of India, the apex body for sailing in India.

A regatta to commemorate the occasion was held under the combined burgees of the Indian Naval Watermanship Training Centre (Mumbai), The Sea Cadet Corps Sailing Association and the Army Yacthing Node. Entries included close to a 100 Boats of various classes which raced over 3 different courses spanning almost the entire harbour.

Races were held in the Enterprise, Cadet, Optimist, Laser, Laser Radial, 470, 420, Seabird, Lightning, Hobie 16, J-24, Star & Mistral Classes, out of which 5 were Olympic classes. The wind was quite gusty and provided for a variety of exciting racing conditions. It was almost as if the weather was also paying homage to the YAI for having carried the Indian Flag proudly for 45 years and producing many a World & Asian champion in the wonderful sport of sailing.

The series constituted of 6 keenly contested races and results in many classes were decided only on the last day of racing. The courses were Trapezoid, enabling the race committee to make maximum use of the time available.

Entries included World Champions Farokh Tarapore (420 Class) , Homi Motivala (Enterprise Class), Asian Champion Naresh Yadav (Enterprise Class) as well as Ashim Mongia in the J24 Class. Current National Enterprise Champ R. Mahesh battled it out with former crew Nitin Mongia (2003 OK Dinghy Champ) in the Star Class which is the oldest Olympic Class.

The International Lightning & the Seabird Fleets were completely dominated by Shahid Basheer of the Colaba Sailing Club & Sandeep Mhatre also of the CSC respectively. Two RBYC Sailors, Xerxes Bamboat & Viraf Heerjee, excelled in the Optimist class making it a 1-2 knockout, while the Cadet Class was dominated by the Sea Cadets.

There was an Awards function held at the INWTC (Mumbai) on Sunday, the 1st of May, which was presided over by the then Union Sports Minister, the late Mr. Sunil Dutt. Prizes were awarded to the winners of each individual Class. The presentations were followed by dinner & cocktails on the upper deck of T.S. Jawahar, which provided a fitting finale for the event.

The various sailing clubs of Bombay exhibited exceptional co-operation in organizing the event, which resulted in the regatta being a resounding success with excellent participation and the race management being exemplary. Such events will really go a long way in promoting the popularity of the sport in the country.

Overall Winners:
Enterprise: Naresh Yadav & Navnish Yadav (INWTC)
Laser : P Madhu (AYN)
Laser Radial: Lt. Cdr. Amit Arvind (INWTC)
Lightning: Shahid Basheer, Pia Sanyal & Gaurav Shinde (CSC)
Seabird: Sandeep Mhatre, Gulshan Chunekar, Ninad Mayekar & Hema Mehta (CSC)
470: Ayaz Shaikh & Sandeep Jain (AYN)
420: Farokh Tarapore & Vikas Kapila (INWTC)
Cadet: 1.Asvini Rane & Akash Revankar (SCCSA), 2.Shradha Hadkar & Akash Kotiyan (SCCSA)
Optimist: 1. Xerxes Bamboat (RBYC), 2. Viraf Heerjee (RBYC)
Mistral: PJ Thomas (AYN)
Star: Lt. Cdr. R. Mahesh & DP Selvam (INWTC)