Oman Sail’s A100 Majan claimed line honours in the 360-mile Dubai to Muscat Race, narrowly missing out on the overall record.  The race concluded the inaugural Tour of Arabia that has seen Majan and her crew trace out this new route via five GCC countries that has unveiled a challenging new sailing arena that is steeped in maritime history. Read Mark Covell’s race blogs from onboard Majan…

Dubai to Muscat Race: Pre-Start “The Last Leg Home”
With measured enthusiasm the crew of Oman Sail’s A100 Majan, a sleek 105-foot state-of-the-art trimaran, slipped off the dock at 10:00 precisely (local time). The skipper Paul Standbridge had chosen his crew carefully…

Moshin Al Buisadi - He become the first ever Arab to sail non-stop around the world in March this year. His assured cool calm manner will be a great influence to the other two Omani sailors on the crew.

Mohammed al Ghailiani - A strong tall lad with a cheeky smile and a good head for heights, as it is one of his jobs to go aloft and kick the mainsail battens through in light airs.

Hussain Al Riyami - The most technical of all the crew with good engineering skills and a smile as wide as the Gulf.

Jean Sebastien Chenier Proteau, (Watch Leader) - A young French Canadian with a passion for multihull sailing and the latest 3g iPhone. (Are you listening Father Christmas?)

Nicolas Black (Watch Leader) - Nobi to his mates. A boy not yet a man looking for adventure on the high seas of Arabia.

And Me, Mark Covell, (On Board Media and Camera Man) - A quiet timid sort of fella looking to make my way in this scary new world off yachting Paparazzi. I’m going to try to bring you a keyhole view of this race, sending photos, blogs and footage off the boat.

Paul called the crew together for a crew briefing as we motored to the start. We spoke about how light it was looking and that we would need to be proactive in getting every little thing out of the lightest of zephyrs. It’s great to be competing again. There is nothing like a good race to get all the crew focused and working together. 

In the expectation that this will be a slow race in moderately light airs, Paul has asked the crew to take only the essentials. As much weight has been taken off the boat as is safe. We have no solid food, no spare tools and the only clothes we have, are the once on our back.  We are now motoring quietly to the start area. There is the faint hint of some wind on the water. Could this be the start of the sea breeze?

Dubai to Muscat Race: Start: “Its A Minefield In More Ways Than One”

A safe start was the call and a safe start was made. When you’re barreling towards a short line in a 105-foot tri at 10 knots with 360 miles to race, no one needs to be a hero. Our first waypoint was off the Dubai Docks marking the exclusion zone. It was a light and fluky beat. We soon discovered that it wasn’t the wind shifts that was causing our wavering heading, but hundreds of small fishing buoys dotted in our path like a Maritime minefield. Seb manned the bow watch as we picked our way gingerly through.

It wasn’t long before we saw our opposition snaking their way towards us. The warm breeze was flicking from left to right, up and down like a fickle stock market and we aimed to catch the rising stock and be on the making tack. The TP52 Team Premier was making good work of it. Being the lighter more nimble boat, she could tack on smaller shifts than us to invest in smaller stocks minimizing her losses. In a punchy move to minimize our tacking we hitched up to a port lay line a little earlier than planned. The move paid off… We hit it spot on and cracked off to our new course. After about two miles in we rolled out our power-play headsail the 300sqm G1, we watched the TP52’s dark shape become more of a dot as we stretched away into the evening.

Our plan was to stay close to the UAE shore as we felt that the light sea breeze would shut off later that evening. Being further in would give us a chance to pick up the nightly drainage winds as hot air over the land cools and falls back off and out to sea. This never extends too far offshore so in, was the way forward for us. We trod a thin line between depth, distance off the rhum line and night time pressure, all the time thinking of being in the right place come the morning.

Then the inevitable happened - sooner or later the transition between day and night winds brought the shut off. Flat calm, nothing, narda, a vacuum of still air sucking all the strength from the only source of forward motion we had. The sound of gurgling water rushing by was replaced by a stationary slap, slapping of the oily glass. Our worry was that we were getting further offshore so we had to tack.

Tacking in no wind is always a problem because there isn’t enough pressure to make the full length battens pop in the main. They can stay poked the wrong way, left over from the last tack. Sailing on starboard with the battens bending up towards you is like trying to fly with the wings on upside down. We now just send Mohammed al Ghailiani, ‘spiderman’ himself, straight to the top of the mast to kick the battens through. It’s not easy in the pitch black, walking out from the mast against the pull of the halyard 35m up with a bunch of idiots shouting at you from below. He does a fantastic job and so far on this trip he has the ‘man of the match’ prize.

We made the tack and picked up some nice land breeze just like we planned. We were in the money until the morning when all bets were off… Everything went quiet again just making a crawl over the sea bed due to the fact that we had favourable current under us, sluicing us round the rocky headlands and craggy Islands. Please can we have some wind?

Dubai to Muscat Race: Home Straight “Inshallah, Allah will decide”

Friday was pretty hard for us. It would have been pretty hard for all the fleet but for us Friday was a day of limited options. Overnight we had worked up the UAE coast well and extended our lead out on the TP52 Team Premier. The day started well as the sun rose over the rocky Oman hills the lads on board were happy to be back in Omani waters. “Eid Mubarak” came the joyful greeting. It translates into happy Eid, the Muslim festival being celebrated all over the world.  We were in Musandam country right at the very top of Oman in the Hormuz Staits. Oman Sail’s Mohsin Al Busaidi who became the first ever Arab to sail non-stop around the world on board the 75-foot trimaran Musandam was stationed at the lighthouse here for two months while in the Navy. His comments about the place were typical of a young man stuck on a small Island for two months: “I wanted to sail away but there was nothing but water and sea gulls, no boats to escape on!”

The sun was now high in the sky and beginning to burn into the morning haze. Our hope was that the sun would burn the haze off and make way for a week sea breeze, but like a boy stood up on his first date, nothing came. It got hotter and hotter, calmer and calmer until it was easy to see your face mirrored in the oily water. There was still a constant dialogue about what next, what if and where from? We could only hope that our opposition were drifting in the same millpond…

Nightfall came and with it came a cool zephyr drifting down the Gulf of Oman. Fearing we would be stuck in the middle of the pond as night fell, we took a safety tack over to the Omani coast and away from Iran and a very busy shipping lane. Later that night we had to tack again. Nobi would have us believe he called the perfect lay-line for the finish line just off Marina Bandar Arrowdha. The real reason we tacked was we were forced to stay out of Iranian waters. As the night drew on the wind blew harder. We are now blasting towards Muscat with our ears pricked up. The water is dead flat and we are hammering along at 15 knots on a heading of 145 degrees. Our routing puts us over the finish in about 7 hour from now, VERY close to the record. It will be right down to the wire! We need the wind to lift like I need a bath… Let’s see if our masterplan plays out or as the Omani’s are so fond of saying “Inshallah” - Allah will decide…

Dubai to Muscat Race: Final few hours of the race

The final few hours were a slow realisation that the promised lift was NOT going to come and we would have to painfully tack up the last 40 miles of coast. We would fall short of getting a new course record but looking on the bright side we would have line honours. We all enjoyed the warm 20 knots and waves as the wind had been on the lighter side of light for the majority of the Tour of Arabia. All the Omani crew were also looking forward to seeing their family and friends, and having some quality time off for the festival of Eid. We crossed the line just after 1900 hours (local), cleared customs and motored back to The Wave marina. Over the next few days Majan would be taken out of the water, sails and rig off, for her first check-over before getting ready for a Tour of Oman then the Indian Ocean 5 Capes Race and the exciting Southern Ocean…