China Club Challenge Cup 2016. Calm after the storm - very!

by Shanghai Sailor on 21 Sep 2016 If anyone ever faced a challenge running a regatta it was the organisers of this year’s China Club Challenge Match in Xiamen China. Mere hours before the practice day, typhoon Meranti descended on the island city. Well, ‘descended’ is perhaps not the correct word, more like ‘fell, with a hammer blow’. The strongest storm anywhere on earth this year, it devastated - not only the city with clean-up going on as I write and many areas running on generator power or candles - but several of the boats due to be used in the regatta, which were left without rigs, with tattered sails and even one or two sunk at their pontoon berths.

A fantastic effort by the organisers managed to locate - and persuade owners to lend – a further eight boats to enable the fleet of 30 to compete as one instead of being split into flights. And it wasn't only the racing boats that suffered. The RIBs set aside for the mark laying and other RIBs for umpiring duties were also hit, so mark layers and umpires had a crossover on the use of one of the RIBs. Just one of those things sent to test the Management!

Day 1 saw typical, almost windless, post typhoon weather with Meranti having sucked virtually all the pressure difference out of the atmosphere. The SIs were amended to show an earliest start of 1300 instead of the intended 1000, and it was perhaps a dubious group of sailors and officials that made their way to Wu Yuan Bay. Add to the light winds mid-Autumn spring tides, and racing outside in the main channel was impossible but with an inspired RO decision to race in the bay itself at least the day didn’t end ‘raceless’, with one race being banked on the less tidal waters just off the marina.

Day 2 was a little better for wind, but not much. However, by cracking on when the opportunity arose, four races were squeezed out of the light conditions. The lack of wind produced significant bunching at choke points on the course, keeping the umpires’ whistles busy and plenty of red and green-and-white flags in evidence.

Many of these were from the overly enthusiastic production of the prodder at the top mark, with some ‘sticking it out’ halfway between windward and offset mark with the gennaker still firmly down below. This seemed a habit that some crews couldn’t remedy, even when boats just in front were penalised,

Eventually the wind strengthened and settled in direction, so the later races were less of a ‘wind-hunt’. And so the pattern was maintained on Sunday but eventually the Race Committee managed seven races, enabling them to declare a series.

Like Club Cups of the past, the evening social scene was just as much fun, with a highlight being a dinner sponsored by Microlab, the electronics manufacturer, involving a Chinese dice game with prizes of rather nice Bluetooth sound systems. Several people on our table won prizes while freely admitting to not having the slightest idea just how – just like a good ma few sailors I know!

The final night’s prizegiving was a first class affair, with a gracious hostess, excellent food, free beer - and some new prize categories. For the first time there was a Ladies’ Prize – that’s certainly one way to attract women into our sport - along with separate podiums for pro-sailors and amateur sailors; a clever way to spread the spoils.

The winner of the inaugural Ladies Prize was the Luther Female Sailing Team. first on the Amateaur podium was Xiamen University Jetpon Team, followed by Yunnan Fuxian Lake Team and Whitewave Sailing Centre. J-Boats Racing Team from Xiamen collected the top Pro prize, with Sea Blue Team in second place and the Wind & Water Club in third.

The top eight teams from this weekend’s efforts will return in early November for the match race element of the Club Cup, once again a fully umpired event hopefully not in the immediate aftermath of a weather system like that experienced last week!