Capt. Vivek Shanbhag, the Vice Commodore of the Royal Madras YC, and passionate J/80 sailor provided us a quick report of what's happening with the nascent J/80 class in India. Commented Capt. Shanbhag:"The Royal Madras YC was established in 1910, is located inside the Chennai Port, and has been popularizing sailing in South India.
We have a small fleet of five J/80s and I have been actively pushing keelboat sailing for years.
Our sailors have participated at the J/80 Asian Championship in China in 2018 and 2019 having ranked 5th and 4th, respectively.
We had 3 RMYC teams participating at the J/80 World's 2019 in Spain and it was a very good exposure with overall ranking around 55th in a fleet of 80 boats.
In India, we do not have a J/80 Class Association. We have a total of five J/80s in India and plan to have our J/80 Class Association shortly.
J/80 Offshore EventApart from the usual races we conduct, for the first time we are conducting an Offshore event between two cities- Chennai and Puducherry, which are 160 kms apart. The event is from 10th March to 14th March 2021.
With the prevalent winds, it should take us about 24 hours each way.
We want to scale it up and I have been working hard with different agencies. An Indian Navy vessel will be escorting us, the Indian Coast Guard is giving Search and Rescue coverage, and we can scramble a helicopter in 30 minutes.
Satellite tracking for continuous coverage is also being provided. A log-in id and password will be published and the race can be tracked from anywhere in the world. The AIS is a challenge and expensive, but we should be able to have them too. We are looking forward to a fun and challenging event for our J/80 fleet!Add to Flipboard Magazine.
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