The Bub in the Belly

My office looks out to Marina Bay so, on Friday last week, I was intrigued to see so many colours zipping about on the water. I asked around and found out about this regatta. I was excited at the chance to use my 10-24 mm lens so I hurried everyone out of the house after we came back from Shichida class. We arrived just in time to watch the finals of the Extreme 40, which was a critical double-pointer!

The Extreme Sailing Series is known for its Stadium Sailing format, which means that the multihulls sail very close to the spectators in tight, demanding courses, each race lasting not more than 15-20 minutes, with as many as eight races per day. Singapore is the second leg (Act 2) of the eight-leg international circuit. The next stop is Qingdao, China's Olympic sailing city.

The Extreme 40 is a beautifully designed multihull, which is as powerful as it is visually stunning and it is amazing to watch the crews work together, both on and off shore, to handle these 40-foot machines. Disappointingly, there was hardly any wind on Sunday so the speed machines were not able to show off their full potential. Nevertheless, it was still pretty amazing for us to be able to come up so close to them.

The photo below shows the Singapore team, Team Aberdeen Singapore, which was participating as an "invitational team". Here you can see it approaching the black marker, which was the finish line. Ryan's nanny's eldest daughter, Caroline, had a VIP invitation to be a "guest sailor" on this! We managed to bump into her at the event (she wasn't sailing for the final race). She gave us a short orientation as to what was happening and where the best phototaking spots were.

Here's Richard shaking hands with Nila, the mascot for the Singapore National Games.

Ryan missed most of the action. He fell asleep in the car on the way there and, actually, we considered going home. Richard suggested we put him in the stroller and carry on, so that's what we did. Ryan slept on until the final horn of the race. Several people came up to take a picture of him sleeping in this position.

Not looking too happy at being woken up by the horn. After this photo was taken, and after he had a short chat with Caroline, he asked to get back into the stroller.

Babydoll, on the other hand, had a ball of a time. Here she is, checking out the sailors when they came in to dock after the race.

The ones in white were the winning team - the Swiss team Alinghi. I am still puzzled as to why only one of them (on the extreme right) seems to have a tan.

We stayed back a little to watch the finals of the NeilPryde Windsurf Racing Series. I used to windsurf so this brought back some memories. I also recalled why I gave up windsurfing - the surfers had such a tough time getting enough wind in their sails!

Here are the windsurfers coming in after the race. We went off after this for dinner and didn't stay for the prize-giving ceremony.