Local sailors performed traditional dance in their Lepi Lepi, boats crewed by Malaysians of southern Philippine influence. These able fisherman stay on the open ocean for many months at a time. Women and young girls danced with slow, rhythmical hand movements, their fingertips decorated with six-inch long nails.

Then, casually, the boats sailed off.

Mark Burnett had already instructed teams at the pre-race briefing that this start was mainly to test the waters, and it turns out to have been a pretty good idea. Brisk breezes made the sailing quite comfortable for awhile, with only small swells on the ocean stretch between Semporna and Sabangkat Island, the first checkpoint before the race begins with serious certainty tomorrow.

While many teams found the first leg easy sailing, others had difficulty with their boats. Team The North Face, one of the teams carrying a GPS unit during the race to monitor their route for Quokka Sports, sunk its Perahu, and swam around for awhile retrieving their floating gear. Said Keith Byrne, “Our boat was down at the bottom having a chat with the Titanic.” They had taken on too much water, and were hit by a big swell from behind, which submerged them within seconds. Teammate Steve Duffy wasn’t rattled: “I’m not going out of this race that quickly.” Their boat was towed in and was being repaired.

When the teams arrived at the long strip of beach on the east shore of Sabangkat, they portaged their Perahus to designated slots, and immediately began various construction projects, by gathering building materials like wood, hammers, nails and tools from the local villagers. With a corps of over a hundred camera crews and media milling around and taking advantage of this staging area photo op, teams reinforced mast rigging, duct taped outriggers, and raised their gunwales with local lumber. Many teams were concerned by how much water they were taking on, and not all seemed to have efficient bilge pumps; some were just bailing. John Howard of pre-race favorite Team Fairydown Fleet CookieTime said, “I think I’ll run up and down the beach all night to try to lose weight.” His teammate Andrea Murray looked at her boat: “There is so little room in here with all our gear, it’s like you are four rub-a-dub-dubs in a tub.”

Ike Wilson of Team Salomon/Eco-Internet said of the boats: “It’s like somebody handed you a 66 Chevy Impala and told you to go drive around for awhile.” Teammate Robyn Benincasa just shook her head: “Our boat sinks,” she said.

Race Director Mark Burnett told teams to lighten their load if they could, adding that they should only take enough water for 24 hours of traveling, and that he would transport extra water up ahead on the course to help with this issue. But with a handful of boats having difficulties sailing on benign seas, many wonder what it will be like if the weather turns nasty like it did last night, when lightning, thunder, and high winds ripped through the area on the tail-end of a low level Philippine typhoon.

Said Patrick Harper of Team oobe, “We’d have to get out of the boat, hang on to the outriggers, and just float there until it passed,” he said.

As darkness fell the international teams were cruising around the beach with one another, admiring different boat maintenance techniques, laughing and chatting and relaxing in a very beautiful place. Some team members were playing with the island children; a few joined in on a game of volleyball. Most teams were camped comfortably in lightweight mosquito-net tents or hammocks.

At sunrise tomorrow the race really begins. Boat failures, breakdown, and sinkings will mean the end of the race, so there will likely be fitful sleep for some whose sail over to Sabangkat Island was less than smooth.