(Manama, Bahrain)- Young Sam Gilmour continues his “glam” run up the
ISAF world match racing tour ladder, and the Western Australian, an
Anarchist since he learnt to read, sent in this exclusive report from
another new Arabian venue that may be following in Dubai and Oman’s
footsteps as an “up-and-comer” for the next generation of sailors. As
you’ll learn, the regatta was spectacular, with sunny skies, winds
blowing a gale and many an experienced skipper humbled by match-racing
J/24s in fairly demanding conditions. Gilmour’s commentary follows:“The 2013 Kingdom Match Cup held out of the Bahrain Maritime Sports Centre was held over the week 15-21 December, beginning with a qualifying event, followed then by the open regatta. Competitors flew in from all over the world to compete for the title, and with serious prize money up for grabs as well as an Omega sponsorship, the competition was fierce.
Neptune
Racing, consisting of skipper Sam Gilmour, trimmer Adam Negri,
tactician Chris Smith and bowman Justin Wong travelled to Bahrain hoping
to contest for the title. We as a team knew we had to bring our A-game
with some others with impressive résumés racing. We hadn’t heard much
about Bahrain previously, so we were pleasantly surprised when we
arrived by the modern layout of the capital city Manama, and the
difference in culture was a real eye opener to us.Having qualified for the open event already, we sailed the qualifying regatta as a warm-up event. This gave us a chance to orient ourselves with the boats, conditions and some of our opponents. We were racing J/24’s- a very common class, and whilst not ideal for match racing, the team adapted to the boats quickly- finishing the qualifier just ahead of Sergey Musikhin from Russia, Seviero Ramirez from Italy and Mati Sepp from Estonia. These guys had some high ISAF rankings, with Sepp being 20th and Musikhin being 23rd in the world, so it was a positive sign for us to take out the lead up event. Directly after this we went into racing the open Kingdom Match Cup. Whilst most of the teams had raced in the qualifier, a few teams joined the regatta- including Olli-Pekka Lumijarvi from Finland and Vladimir Lipavski from Russia.
In
the opening day of the event we were met by an onshore breeze, ranging
between 15-18 knots, bringing with it a very steep chop due to the
shallow waters surrounding Bahrain. As a result, conditions were really
challenging, with a number of teams (including us) having some big
wipeouts as a result of mistimed maneuvers. We managed to go through the
first day of racing with a record of 4 wins and 1 loss which put us in a
good position for the remainder of the round robin- after which, four
teams were to qualify for semi-finals to be raced on the final day.Because of the regatta format we had a few days mid-regatta of no sailing. This lead to all of us getting a little side tracked, and nearly resulted in Justin thinking he’d take up a new profession, almost getting taken to Pakistan on a falcon expedition with some local hunters. The rest of us just managed to get him back in line for the next day’s racing.
As it turned out, the breeze hung around the entire regatta, increasing at times to well above 20 knots, not falling below 12 knots. Whilst difficult at times, we found our boat handling to be one of our strong points, which allowed us to make up for mistakes made at other points around the race course. Eventually, we finished up the round robin series with a record of 8-3, and qualifying us in second place for the semi-final! We progressed to the next round along with Lumijarvi in first, Musikhin in third and Lipavski in fourth. We were pretty pleased with our position going into finals, but knew we had to step up another level to finish strongly.
Lumijarvi
chose Lipavski to race in the semi’s, meaning we were matched against
Musikhin in a first to 3 points semi-final. We got off to an ideal start
by taking out the first race convincingly, but Musikhin came back
strongly and with a show of impressive boat speed around the course,
winning the second race. Knowing that we were up against it, the team
really lifted for the next two contests, allowing us to progress into
the final with a scoreline of 3-1. Meanwhile in the other semi-final,
Lumijarvi was able to achieve a similar result, also winning 3-1.The finals series got underway immediately, though due to a time constraint it was shortened to a first to 2 series. Fortunately, we managed to come out firing! We won race one after leading around the entire course. This meant a great deal to our confidence, as Lumijarvi had shown great speed in the boats all week.
The
match point position put an increased level of pressure on both teams,
and it showed in the next pre start, with penalties flying for both
teams. Eventually though we started with a penalty off the line (meaning
we had complete a circle at some point around the course), but with the
lead. The race began with a flurry of tacks up the first leg where we
were able to put some distance between us. It was going to be close
getting our penalty in, but we took the spin whilst managing to just
keep the race lead. From there, it was a tense final leg where we were
able to hold Lumijarvi off giving us both the race and regatta win! It
was awesome to come away victorious, winning our first-ever Grade 2
event, as well as going home with some beautiful new watches and prize
money in our pockets, definitely making the win that little bit sweeter!From here, out next event is the Warren Jones International Youth Championships held in home waters at Royal Freshwater Bay Yacht Club in Australia. With some strong international competition coming down to contest the title [including brother David -ed], it’s going to be a thrilling week of sailing.
The team is already looking forward to getting back out on the water, taking huge steps forward every time we compete. Our next step: To continue funding these events as we keep climbing the ISAF world rankings (currently we are up to 33rd), so thanks to RFBYC and all our supporters for helping us to make it happen!” Thanks for contribution from Sailing Anarchy.
Youtube Sailing videos of J/24 match-racing-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tNItDkuI8w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYS4qxQyC8A with Smack That remix
http://www.thebahrainyachtclub.com/?q=content/watersports
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