#MalaysiaMondays - A (very) brief sailing history

The upcoming Youth World Championships in Langkawi, Malaysia will make history when 80 nations head to the Southeast Asia island.

That 80 will be the highest number of nations to compete in the event. Well that’s the first bit of history being made. The next, this will be the first Youth Worlds held by the newly rebranded World Sailing.

Those two bits of information aren’t really going to win you any prizes in next sailing history quiz, which we hold often in the World Sailing office (honestly…), and probably neither will the next few, but they will give you a bit of background about the Youth Worlds venue.

Like all countries that would want to trace their sailing roots, Malaysia is no different with boats being made for travel, trade, piracy and fishing. As those roots grow, that’s where the differences come.

The traditional boats of the region are wooden boats such as Pinas and Bedar which were junk rigged schooners built using indigenous Malaysian techniques. They were built without plans, hull first, frames later.

In ”The Origin of the Trengganu Perahu Pinas” written by Gibson-Hill in 1953, it is said that the first Pinas boats were probably built in the 1840s by a French or German who had settled and married a local girl. The raja, Sultan Baginda Omar, asked him to build a boat like the western vessels, and the Pinas boat was born.

The traditional was brought up to date recently with the Naga Pelangi which was built between 2004 and 2009, but like its predecessors of Malay boats, it fell out of favour with a lack of demand for the junk boats and rising timber costs affecting the numbers being built.

From those traditions, when it comes to racing and sailing as a sport, Malaysia’s history lacks the depth of some of its rivals. Evolving from an old Klang port in the West of the Island, the Malaysia Yachting Association (MYA) has been incorporated since 1968. Now under the guise of Malaysia Sailing Association (MSA), it has an administration office in Kuala Lumpur and a National Training Centre situated in Langkawi, the host of the Youth Worlds.

When it comes to the Olympics, Malaysia first had a sailing representative only as recently as Atlanta 1996. Kevin Lim in the Laser was that ground breaker, and he continued through Sydney 2000, Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008. Lim finally passed the baton to Khairulnizam Mohd Afendy who competed at London 2012. The country has ambitions to win a medal as soon as 2020.

If Lim was a ground breaker in 1996, then another shortly followed in 1999 when Dato’ Azhar Mansor became the first Malaysian to sail solo round the globe. In the same trip, he also became the first person to set a new solo west-east circumnavigation route.

Welcomed home by more than 3,000 people, Azhar thanked everyone in Malaysia who had prayed for him and shared his achievements with the people. He wanted to inspire with his exploits, and if the years that followed are anything to go by, he certainly achieved his goal.

The country is an emerging nation when it comes to sailing, but their recent history is showing they are moving forward. Circumnavigating the globe, regular Olympic competitors and ambitions to do more. They are beginning to hold big international events, such as the Youth Worlds, but also the Monsoon Cup, the Malaysian stop on the World Match Racing Tour.

No doubt the sailing history of Malaysia goes back further, and this is a very brief idea of what the country has to hold in terms of tradition and competitive history, in fact that is true, it goes back a lot further than we all first thought.

In September this year, Ancient shipwrecks were found in the state of Kedah in Malaysia which indicate that there could be a civilization older than that of ninth century Cambodia’s Angkor Wat and the 12th century Borobodur Temple in Indonesia.

Archeologists found the shipwrecks embedded in the mud of an old river which once flowed through the historical site of Kedah Tua thousands of years ago. Thanks to those archeologists, we are going to have to do a lot more digging ourselves, and spend an awful lot of time researching the full history of sailing in Malaysia if we are to share it with you all, but as the Youth Worlds is only a few weeks away, this one will have to do you for now.

ISAF Youth Worlds

Langkawi, Malaysia is hosting the 45th edition of the ISAF Youth Sailing World Championships from 27 December to 3 January 2016. More than 380 sailors from 80 sailing in more than 300 boats across nine disciplines will compete in Malaysia.

Website – www.isafyouthworlds.com/home.php