Singapore Regatta 2025 - Day 1 | Changi Sailing Club

Great Start to Singapore Regatta

One of the perks of holding a regatta at the Changi Sailing Club is that General Manager and Principal Race Officer Choy Yi Hong can stage the starts and finishes of the regatta from the Crow’s Nest of the club’s pier – how convenient is that? He doesn’t have to motor a great distance to find wind or a suitable place to drop anchor. He just wanders down from the clubhouse with a cup of coffee in his head, climbs to his perch, surveys the fleet and let loose with the start sequence.

Now for all you newbies to Singapore yacht racing, it’s certainly not for the feint of heart. At any given moment, in the East Johor Straits, you could have a container ship on your port side, an oil tanker on your starboard and a passenger ferry dead ahead and these behemoths aren’t slowing down, so you better have your head on a swivel and your wits about you, or you just might be saying bye to your boat and your health.

Luckily, the seasoned sailors of the august Changi Sailing Club (CSC) have plenty of experience dealing with this kind of heavy traffic on the water – they aren’t even slightly fazed when a camera boat gets in their way. I mean, after dealing with shipping containers and oil tankers a camera boat is like a rubber ducky.

As today’s racing was about to get underway, PRO Choy made a slight adjustment, taking into consideration fluky winds (10-12 knots) and asymmetrical conditions. He flew the U-flag at the Paku buoy, which became the new turning point as the fleet was diverted from the north angler due to the forecasted lighter winds coming from the east north-east. Once that was all sorted competitors headed out under bright sunny skies.

The J24s and Platu 25s were the first boats off the line with four boats racing in each One Design Class. The J24s saw Lisette Sens’ squad from the Republic of Singapore Yacht Club earn first place on Dua with Jun Zhang’ Chinese crew on the Jiangsu Tianyi High School team coming in second and CSC’s own Suzanne Updike placing third on Jock.

Ivan Boudioukine’s SMUve took top spot in the Platu Class with a Thai team headed by former Olympian Worrasard Saardien and National Jury member Pokpong Pattaweekongla taking second on Notus and Luc Yee’s SMUMad finishing third.

The next class in sequence was the 11-boat Portsmouth Yardstick (PY) class and today’s winner was the ever-so charismatic Simon Piff on his Beneteau First 50, Firstlight, who won on elapsed and corrected time. Second place went to Colin Clark’s Bound to Please and third place went to Michael Chung’s Brio. The tenacity award must go out to Manav Krishan out there single-handed on a boat also called First Light who kept at it and at it till the wind just died completely and the rain came.

In the IRC division, Martin Lund Jensen’s Zanzibar took an early lead, and owned it, zipping through the course for line honours (3:05:41) although they did finish fifth in the seven-boat class once their handicap was applied, and unfortunately, they did blow out their main (oops!). Winning this class today, however, was Lee Yimin’s Jolt, who is a day away from being declared the 2024-25 Sir Thomas Lipton Challenge Trophy winner (exciting times). Second in this class after handicap was applied was defending IRC class champion Adriaan Smit’s Adona, with Thomas Reckefuss’ Born in Fire placing third.

Eugene Wong’s Sirius Swift did some serious racing today winning the six-boat multihull class on both elapsed and corrected time. Freddy Fam’s Phoenix was second in the class edging out Giam Hock Koon’s Oojoo by thirty-seven seconds, who took third overall.

It was great to see the organizers of two other regional regattas on hand as Prakash Reddy, the chairman of the Nongsa Neptune Regatta in Indonesia was sailing on Zanzibar, while Irsyad Ismail, chairman of the Raja Muda Selangor International Regatta was here to cheer on members of his Royal Selangor Yacht Club from Malaysia.

Day 2 will be a series of windward-leeward races to decide who will win the coveted top honours at the fourth Singapore Regatta. Afterwards, there will be a prize-giving at the Changi Sailing Club to not only crown the winners of this regatta but the winner of the 102-year-old Sir Thomas Lipton Challenge Trophy.

Day 1 Results

SR25 Passage Race Results_MH

SR25 Passage Race Results_PY

SR25 Passage Race Results_IRC

SR25 Passage Race Results_OneDesign

Day 1 summary written by Scott Murray, SEA Yachting Magazine

Photos by Kit.