UAE sailors all set to take part in new event

It will be a new mission for the four-member sailing team, which will represent the UAE at the inaugural GCC Match Racing Sailing Championship for J 24 boats today and tomorrow.

But the leader and most experienced member of the team, Yousef bin Lahej, is confident and cheerful as always and predicted good results for his team before leaving from Dubai yesterday.

"It's going to be an interesting event even though we've never sailed together as a team and tried one of these boats either. But if we work hard enough and use our tactical advantage to devastating effect, I'm sure we can do well," said Lahej confidently.

UAE's major threat is likely to be competitors from Bahrain and Qatar. "For the group races we have a fairly easy group, so we shouldn"t have too many problems to get into the final race," said, Lahej, before embarking the Emirates Airline flight to Bahrain.

The four-member UAE team will also include junior sailors Ali Essa and brothers Yousuf and Adil Khalid while Essa Abdulla will be the team leader.

Besides UAE, around 12 teams, representing the other GCC countries, will also be vying in the competition organised by the Bahrain Sailing Club.

The interesting part of the competition will be the race format which will see all the participants, divided into two groups, compete over three races on the first day. Then on the second day, top two boats from each group will "match race" against each other. And the best two will fight for the title in the final race.

The match races will be of a maximum of 25-minutes duration while the fleet race could be anything between 30 to 45minutes.

Using a Soling boat, owned by the Dubai International Marine Club as substitute, the UAE team had a last minute practice along the Club waterfront on Tuesday evening.

The unique feature of the J 24s or "Keel boats" is that it has certain weight underneath to keep the balance and is usually sailed by four persons.