Rolex Sydney Hobart - Chinese Volvo Ocean Race entry finish third

by Jim Gale on 28 Dec 2016 If the hollering and cheering, the sprayed champagne, the faces split from ear to ear with the most outrageous grins were anything to go by, you would think the Chinese members of the most international yacht in the fleet, UBOX, had beaten the world.

Neither the leaden sky, the wintry, dismal Hobart drizzle, nor even hour upon hour of sloshing about a windless Storm Bay and Derwent River, watching their winning chances drifting away were going to rain on this parade. They had done their first Rolex Sydney Hobart, and they had acquitted themselves well.

The French half of this Chinese/Franco campaign was pretty happy too, even if in a more restrained, Gallic way.

“It was not a very tough race,” a somewhat relieved French co-skipper, Charles Caudrelier said. “I think we were very lucky with the weather. That last day we paid a bit, but it was good for our Chinese rookies. They did a very good job.”

Communication was always going to be the make or break issue on this bi-racial boat.

Caudrelier was very grateful this turned out to be a very benign Rolex Sydney Hobart.

“That’s why we were so happy with the forecast before we left the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia. Communicating was not easy, especially at night when we were handing over the watches. We need to improve that. It is a very big issue.

“This was my first Hobart and I could come back 40 times and not get the same weather.

“We learned a lot, and the co-operation was quite awesome,” said Jiru “Wolf” Jang. “At the beginning people said it would be a lot of upwind (sailing), bam bam, but we were quite lucky. A lot of downwind reaching.

“It was a lot of fun. During the first night, we reached 30 knots and were sailing very fast. We all enjoyed it.”

There is a huge amount of ocean racing experience on both sides of this Chinese/French crew and it showed.

UBOX, a Cookson 50, formerly Pretty Fly III, and formerly the New Zealand racer, Pussy Galore, was consistently among the top five or six boats on corrected time all the way down, and was in with a chance of winning until the winds died. When they finally tied up, their Cookson 50 was in third place overall, ahead of the leading TP52s: last year’s winner, Paul Clitheroe’s Balance and Matt Allan’s highly fancied Ichi Ban.

“We made a good move in the transition to the first low on day one, and we were ahead of the TP52s” Caudrelier says. “We didn’t do very well last night. We could have done better.”

In the circumstances, he’s probably being a bit hard on himself. There is not much you can do when there is scarcely enough wind to give you steerage.

And anyway, this campaign was always about promoting and encouraging sailing in China, and it has certainly done that. The race coverage in China has been nationwide.

So will the Chinese be back?

“We’ll be back, and we will do a better job next time,” Wolf grins.