Photo caption: Sailors seen in action on the opening day’s races of The Festival of Sails, an annual weekend sailing regatta conducted by the Indian Naval Watermanship Training Centre (INWTC), at the Mumbai Harbour, near Gateway of India on Friday.Kumar and Sekhar dominate, win all 4 races in 470 class
Mumbai, March 23: Praveen Kumar and Sudhanshu Sekhar cruised to victories winning all the four races in the 470 class category on the opening day of the Johnnie Walker sponsored The Festival of Sails, an annual weekend sailing regatta conducted by the Indian Naval Watermanship Training Centre (INWTC) along with the Royal Bombay Yacht (RBYC), and promoted by the Sailing Association of Maharashtra (SAM).
Both Kumar and Sekhar showed great teamwork and excellent skills as they outsmarted the rest of the field to take the top honours, on a perfect day, with fine weather and good wind conditions, for sailing off the Mumbai Harbour, Gateway of India on Friday.
In the Enterprise class, S.S. Yadav and Rahul Yadav combined nicely to cross the line to bag the top honours for the first three races while D.K. Rajak and K. Arumugam won online in the fourth race.
Another sailor who dominated his event was Rahul Chaudhary who won all four races in Bic Nova surfboards category.
Meanwhile, in the Laser Standard event saw line honours going to Avinash Yadav in the first race, Ajay Singh Rajput in the second and fourth races and Ramakant Tiwari in the third race.
In the Laser Radial class, Ramya Sarvanan won the line honours in first, third and fourth race while Vivin Vinil won it in the second race.
In the Optimist class, Advait Menon won the first, second and fourth race while Rhea Bhasin won the third race.
Racing started in earnest and races in six categories – 470s, Enterprise, Bic Nova Surfboards, Laser Standard, Laser Radial and Optimist were conducted on the opening day.
The races were judged by renowned International Judges Brig. G S Julka, Brig. Jagdish Singh, Col. Deepak Dikhit, Ms. Sunita Masani, Mr. Cyrus Herjee and Col. Satish Kanwar.
Ten races will be held for each category over next three days, with four races each on Friday and Saturday and two on Sunday.