PSC SQUIB RACE REPORT SUNDAY 12 Feb 2023 Series 1 Race 1
A fine turnout of 7 boats for the first race of the new series were greeted by
good wind and a favourable ebbtide
Competitors were Vice Commodore Rama in Lady VG with potential new
member Anthony and his youngest as crew both very welcome and we
understand will be sailing the boat in Ramas absence visiting Maldives , Yasid
with a friend as crew in Ratatosk ( the Squirrel ) MJ with his children as crew in
Tom which he has now purchased ( suppose THE CAT !) , Wolfram with crew
Audley in the beautifully decorated Jerry complete with mouse illustration (
the Mouse ), Charles sailing Alice with 2 friends as crew Rainer and treasurer
David in Kittiwich and Commodore Jeremy in Cabaret 7 with new member
Amirah as crew
Kittiwich and Cabaret some how broke away from the start and fought out a
duel on the beat out of the river with Kittiwich in front however on the reach
out to Selat Cabaret sailing more to windward came through to round
narrowly in front , the more experienced crew on Kittiwitch had their
spinnaker up first and passed Cabaret again , racing side by side up the river
eventually Cabaret on the inside pulled ahead to win by a short head , behind
some great duels were taking place , Jerry and Lady Vg with Lady Vg prevailing
in the end but Jerry who are relatively new to the fleet showed their potential
, there is a learning curve on the these easy to sail but not so easy to sail well
Squibs , the fascinating combination of boat speed and tactics Charles in Alice
was 5 th MJ I Tom another new comer 6 th and Yasid in the Squirrel 7 th ,
noticeably the Squirrel unscrubbed anto fouled like the others was slower ,
Getting the boats out due to our new breed of retrieval trailer designed by
Rainer and fabricated by Rama makes this much easier
Anyway a great start to the season which is going to be very competitive , we
are waiting for John and Jason in Mandarin and Peach with Simon and Harro in
particular to join the fun , the Commodore hopes to have club boat Second
Wind and his Wombat in within in 2 weeks
After racing an excellent barbeque was provided by Vladimir and Benny , really
good food at a reasonable price , we plan to have these regularly through the
season , enjoyed by 20 pax
Next up is our OUT OF AFRICA Thursday social on 23 rd February , the
Commodore will be trying to explain about tides , a mystery to sailors and non
sailors alike not just the tactics of river tidal sailing but safe berthing too , the
Squibs are very strongly built which is why they have lasted so long and
survived some learning but bashing them into the pontoon is not good , the
Commodore provides Patchik and Rahim to help slow the boats and things but
there is safety in this too ….
PSC SQUIB RIVER RACE REPORT SUNDAY 19 February SERIES 1 RACE 2
As the Commodore will be explaining at Thursdays meeting the way of tides is
that a good ebb outwards tide is followed the following weekend by a bad
incoming flood tide , We try to lessen the impact by starting later as there is
generally more wind . On this occasion we had a nice breeze for the start so
sailed out from the start , the alternative is to motor down the river where
there is less tide and generally more wind
We had a good turn out with 5 boats Vice Commodore Ramas Lady VG with
Anthony and his brother as crew, Rainer and David in Kittiwich MJ and his
family in their newly purchased Tom , Martin with new members David and
Alex in Jegas Alice and Commodore Jeremy in Cabaret 7 with new member
Peter as crew , lots of sailing experience but needing to learn the mysteries of
sailing on our river
Sadly Simon advised he will not be continuing to charter Dr Firdaus Peach 2 ,
subject to the owners agreement of course Harro will we be continuing with a
new partner
A part of the learning curve which does make our sailing more interesting
starting on an adverse you must be ON THE LINE AT THE START , Kittiwich
and Cabaret were and they were away and never caught , this beating against
a strengthing tide is tough sailing , it doesn’t make it less fun for the sailors but
it is depressing when on the following tack you land up opposite the same
riverbank tree !! Kittiwich and Cabaret had their usual tacking duel passing
each other multiple times but on this occasion Cabaret pulled ahead only to
sail into a hole on the north shore between the shipyard and the point ,
coming back together cabaret from being well ahead was bac with Kittiwich
who then sailed into the same hole leaving Cabaret to sail off for the usual
battle to get to and round Selat including a set to with a typical local ship
which ignored the channel markers and sailed straight across, our safety comes
from the big ships staying in the channel whilst we stay out , this cowboy
showed every intent of running us down , Anyway with some kinder tide
Cabaret rounded and set off for home, crew Peter who had never handled a
spinnaker did a good job in untangling the usual and seemingly inevitable mess
. It looked as if no one else would round and an agreement was reached to
take the positions as finishing , Kittiwich however found more favourable
conditions and managed to round, Lady VG and Tom were well out of the river
but but past 1600 from a 12,30 start makes for a very long race and
inadequate time for discussion over a cold beer/100 plus !
Finishing order 1 Cab 7 2 Kittiwitch 3 Lady VG 4 Tom 5 Alice
Finally to revert briefly to our report on the RLIR these are just opinions and
particularly taken out of context there is no intention of criticism of anyone ,
the regatta has best in our view the best race officer in Asia but not much he
or anyone else can do about a total lack of wind ,he did his best to get racing in
but no regatta can be a complete success without wind, we look forward to
competing again in 2023 hopefully with wind and also more boats with IRC
rating and to seeing Simon as Race Officer for the second Malaysian Squib
Nationals in the first week of June , everyone enjoyed it thanks to his great
sailing organisation , it adds a new dimension to racing