The young Omani Women’s Team continues to perform well…
Rising Tide Leadership Institute Ambassador Dee Caffari, a veteran of past events, shared thoughts before Leg 6: “It is usually quite eventful with quite a mixture of weather.” Enroute there is a ‘ship graveyard’ the boats will sail past. In the last race the start was windy but then the wind dropped off to nothing, and the boats had to motor for 35 miles. “Fortunately I don’t think we’ll have any of that this time,” advises Caffari of the big conditions.
The leg will hold much significance for Caffari’s crew, four of whom are from Oman. “It is huge for these girls because they train out of Mussanah, and some of the girls come from Mussanah. For them this is going home.”
Dee Caffari (L)
Among Caffari’s crew is 22 year old Ibtisam Al-Salmi who knows Mussanah well, having trained there extensively since she joined Oman Sail Women Program more than one year ago. “EFG Bank Sailing Arabia The Tour is a good chance for me to sail,” says Al-Salmi who operates the ‘pit’ on board Al-Thuraya Bank Muscat, managing the hoisting and dropping of sails during the in-port races. “This is my first event sailing around the GCC countries, so I am very happy to be doing it. Dee is brilliant. It is good for me to learn as much as I can from her and her experience, because she’s a really good sailor and that is good for us.”
Like several of the other girls in Caffari’s crew, Al-Salmi is expecting to be heading for France this year from March until July to compete aboard a J/80 yacht, with a program culminating in the J/80 World Championship. Al-Salmi says that she likes inshore and offshore racing equally. “My ambition is to be a good sailor, and to know the boat, and everything going on it, so that when they put me in each place in the boat I can know what to do.” ~ Oman Women’s Sailing Team, placed a respectable 7th in Leg 6.
A stunning victory for the Dutch boys!
Dutch Student Team Delft Challenge -TU Delft pulled off a stunning victory in today’s leg of the Gulf region’s only long distance offshore sailing race, finishing over an hour ahead of the nearest rival!
All the boats competing in EFG Bank Sailing Arabia The Tour are Farr 30 one designs, identical boats of identical speed, and under normal circumstances in an offshore leg the boats are separated by minutes, if not seconds. However on the sixth leg of the event from Zighy Bay to Mussanah Marina, the leading boat, TU Delft, arrived one hour and 12 minutes ahead of her rivals. The sixth leg should have been plain sailing for the leading three teams, but Delft took a risky tactic of splitting from the rest of the fleet, and heading inshore in the early hours of the morning. The Dutch student team, at one point, was ahead by more than 10 miles – impressive, on a leg that ended up being less than 60 miles from start to finish, after it was shortened.
Issa Al Ismaili, Events Director of race organizer Oman Sail, however, knows that upsets are all part of the thrill of sailing: “It’s a sign of how wide open sailing can be as a sport – our mission is to show everyone in the region that sailing is an accessible sport, and there could be no greater vindication of that ideal than a win from one of our youngest teams. It’s a thrill to see Team Delft Challenge excel here on one of the final legs of the tour, in idyllic sailing conditions.”
These young women, and men, are competing against,
and with, some of the greatest sailors in the world!
Photos by Lloyd Images
