YAI ushers in golden jubilee

MUMBAI: The Yachting Association of India was formed in 1985 and celebrated its silver jubilee in 1985 with a regatta in Mumbai and an inter-club event in Khadakvasla as the finale.
Now the golden jubilee beckons and the YAI is celebrate with a multi-classes regatta from event May 14-19. The Ocean Blue Multi Classes Regatta 2009, under the aegis of Indian Naval Watermanship Training Centre, was ushered in with practice and registration on Wednesday.
The event is a selection trial for the Asian Championships and Asian Games to be held next year and has attracted over 200 competitors.There will be match racing from May 14-16 and fleet racing form May 16-19.
In match racing two boats are pitted against each other in races that last about 15-20 minutes. This is the format that is used in the America's Cup and is getting extremely popular all around the world. This has now been included as an Asian Games Class of racing in the Open category and an Olympic Class in the women's.
The event will be conducted in the J24 class of boats with four persons per boat.
The leading contenders and competitors to follow are the quartet of Arjuna Awardee's R Mahesh, Nitin Mongia, Farokh Tarapore and Aashim Mongia who would be pitting their skills against each other vying for the top honours.
The fleet racing will feature over 100 boats ranging from the small and versatile Optimist Class sailed by children under 15 to the colourful catamaran Hobie 16 class which would be zipping around the course with its crew on trapezes.
The diverse classes in which races will be held are The Laser (Asian Games and Olympic Class), Laser Radial Open (Asian Games and Women's Olympic Class), Laser 4.7 (Asian Games Youth Class) and Windsurfing (Asian Games and Olympic Class).
The hot contenders to watch out for are multiple Asian Games medalist Rajesh Choudhary and the Olympic campaigner Rohini Rau in the Laser Radial Open, Youth who have distinguished themselves in the Optimist in the past like Varun Thakkar and the sailing team from Bhopal in the Laser 4.7 youth class.