China Cup International Regatta 2016 – a view from the rail

by Guy Nowell, Sail-World Asia on 8 Nov 2016 Subtitled: Some very personal opinions (although I am not alone).

I have a love-hate relationship with the China Cup International Regatta. It is, without argument, the biggest big boat regatta in China. In fact, with a total of 131 boats in 10 divisions it is the biggest big boat regatta in Asia, and let’s not quibble about regattas that include dinghies and windsurfers and use the number to boost the total - there’s nothing under 28 feet racing here.

China Cup has done a good job of promoting sailing in China, and in promoting China to the world. Three cheers, and well done. I enjoy the event because I go sailing – for a whole regatta – with some good friends and have a great time on the water. (The reasons behind why I race rather than attend as a member of the media or as a photographer are historical). The race management was conducted for many years by the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, so no complaints there, and in recent years has been under the watchful eye of Simon James who is well known to Asia region sailors from his involvement with many of the major Asian events including the Koh Samui Regatta and more. So no problem there.

This year’s event split the fleet onto two race courses. On Course Area A the three IRC divisions and the Beneteau 40.7OD div were raced on trapezoid courses, and that worked too. The passage race from Hong Kong to Daya Bay, now rechristened the Shenzhen Sunbathing Rally, was a 3-kt ditch crawl that saw only five finishers from a starting fleet of 71. Putting a gate in the middle of the 25nm straight line course might have been a good idea from the point of view of timing and/or a short finish, but would have severely restricted everyone’s tactical options and turned the trip into a soldier’s course. Also, and for political reasons, CCIR Management want The Finish to be firmly in China waters.

The blanket 1600h ABSOLUTE cutoff which strongly favoured the faster boats and didn’t allow the less quick ones to hold on for a handicap catch-up is there because CCIR really really really want everyone to get to the party in the evening, and parties and speeches are always more important than mere racing at China Cup. For the record, Black Baza took line honours; on stage, owner Anthony Root said that it was “a great race” – a less than erudite comment, but possibly understandable if you are one of the 7.04% that actually finished. With no finishers at all in the IRC B, IRC C and Beneteau 40.7OD divisions, this race was eventually scrubbed from their race card completely.

Am I getting ahead of myself here? Well, I did say that I have mixed feelings about the CCIR. Let’s go back to the racing.

When there’s no breeze, there is no racing. On Friday there was so little breeze it was negative. Meaning that motoring forwards to keep cool didn’t work – you had to go astern. After a respectable pause the Foreign Race Officer sent everyone back to the marina under ‘AP over H’, and at 1430h all racing was abandoned for the day, and now there was plenty of time to get everyone on the buses for the 45-min trundle to Da Mei Sha for the all-important party. One informed wag remarked, “Yesterday we didn’t finish; today we never even started… and I still couldn’t get a beer until after 15.00h.” (Onshore, and sitting out the lack of breeze until the beer tent opened, some competitors made up for a lack of on-water action by racing radio-controlled minis in a paddling pool. And there was even a division for 'real' RC boats.)

Some of us, the privileged few, attended the Sailing Spirit Grand Ceremony. This was a massively lavish awards ceremony held in a derelict industrial building that had been disguised with a few billowy drapes for the evening and filled with some very large video screens. There was no air conditioning, and it was hot: the two comperes looked good from a distance, but rather sweaty in close-up. A number of people were given awards, but most of the ceremony and the personnel appeared to have little to do with sailing or yacht racing. “This is the third time I have been presented with one of these,” confided one Awardee, “and I still don’t know why.” It was a splashy occasion, to be sure, but why on earth CCIR feels obliged to spend huge amounts of money on non-regatta-related activities is a mystery (but we know the answer. Read on).

On day three we got racing, in spades. If the breeze had been holding its breath for the past 48hrs, Saturday was the day to open the bag and let it all out. This was full on, hard tack racing in 20kts steady, and the top gust we saw on Whiskey Jack was 27. Coupled with a big and lumpy sea, this was testing stuff for a crew of Adventure Dentists (see official race reports) on a J/109, even one that has won her division at the CCIR twice before. Suddenly all that brochure stuff about passion and courage and striving, and wild blue oceans (more grey, to tell the truth) came true. In three trapezoid races the Whiskey Jacks distinguished themselves with 3, 4, 1 finishes in a 15-boat fleet to claim second place on the scoreboard with a day to go.

Last day, Sunday, and the Whiskey Jacks were feeling as they had gone three rounds with Mike Tyson the day before. Four points adrift on the score sheet, softer breeze, time to slack off the rig a little. It was a very funky trip around the cans, with the breeze going 90 left during the second and last race, and turning across-and-down legs into close reaches in collapsing breeze. At one point we were being pushed backwards and away from the finish line by the swell. Painful stuff, especially when the last result was a mere sixth, relegating us to second overall. In the last six years Whiskey Jack has collected two firsts, two seconds and a third in division at the China Cup. Not bad for a crew of dedicated Adventure Dentists on a spree.

Afterwards, and before Immigration had arrived on the dock to allow us to leave (and film us doing so - just to make sure we weren’t overstaying in the glorious PRC), it was time for a couple of stiffeners to prepare for the homeward journey, and some reflection.

We spoke to a number of people over three days at Longcheer – sitting next to a New Chum on the 45-min bus journey to Da Mei Sha where the prizegiving extravaganzas are held is a great opportunity to strike up conversation. One overseas crew on our chat list, sailing on a chartered boat in the Beneteau 40.7OD fleet, was absolutely delighted with this year’s CCIR. “There’s nothing like this in North America. You just turn up to this huge regatta, step onto a boat that’s all ready and waiting – and go. And everyone makes you feel very welcome. We think this is a great event, and we’ll be back next year for certain.” At the other end of the spectrum was a crew from Down Under who reported that “after the fluff finish on day 1, our engine broke down on the way to the marina, and we had to be towed home. Since then, every minute we have been on the boat we have been fixing things. The instruments don’t work properly, and there are a whole raft of other problems. Our boat was definitely not ‘race ready’ when we took delivery.” That’s not good.

A visitor from Europe told us, “I’ve been here several times, and the organisers always ask me, ‘How does the China Cup compare with the America’s Cup?’” Well, for a start the AC is a match racing event and the China Cup is a fleet regatta – and of course the ‘America’ in the AC was a boat, not a country. There are other differences, and not too many similarities, but you get the picture. We remember some years ago when the China Cup proudly trumpeted that the event was “bigger than the America’s Cup – we have more boats.” Someone could usefully sort out that misconception.

This year a number of people remarked that the razzamatazz seems to overshadow the sailing itself. A case of the self-congratulatory tail wagging the nautical dog. Over the last ten years (this was the 10th China Cup) there have been plenty of well-meaning pieces of advice offered up to the CCIR organisers, starting with boat maintenance programmes and continuing through ‘concentrating on the core product’, but the answer usually comes down to “that’s not the way we do things in China.”

Out on the water on the Friday, when there was no wind at all, we received a message from an attendee at the eighth Asia-Pacific Sailing Culture Development (Dapeng) Forum which ran concurrently with the regatta. “Plenty of wind here at the Forum,” it said. Chairman of the Race Officials Committee of World Sailing, Jan Stage, spoke at the Forum about the rules that govern the sport of sailing. He explained to the audience that sailing is a self-regulating sport, and it is therefore important for everyone to understand how the rules work and how they are enforced. Some sailors at CCIR will understand the sentiments behind such a remark.

Let’s go back to the beginning: I really do have a love-hate relationship with the China Cup. I love anything that promotes and encourages the further development of a sport that has played an important part of my life, but I get very uncomfortable with an event that thinks it is a great deal better than it really is; with an event that showers everything in glitter to the extent that reality is obscured. There’s an old rule in Media and PR – “Don’t believe your own advertising.” Is the China Cup a properly grounded event that really has the development of sailing at its heart, or is it more interested in promoting its own flashy image, with little regard to the bigger picture?

There are a good many thoroughly grass-roots sailing events in China, run by people who know which way is up, and sailed by sailors who are eager to learn even when they are relatively inexperienced; events that put the competitors and the competition firmly front and centre. The China Cup does not appear to be one of them. Is the China Cup International Regatta just another Shenzhen counterfeit at heart?

The jury’s out – that’s the International Jury, of course.