Game of Wits - Tiger Mok, David Witt, and the Scallywag VOR campaign

by Suzy Rayment on 15 Nov 2017 Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag is back in the news, but not necessarily for their sailing performance. 46-year old Australian skipper David Witt was full of bravado at the start of the Volvo Ocean Race, saying that with the strong backing of his corporate sponsor, Sun Hung Kai Financial, he had been able to put together a crew that had an advantage over their six rivals.

After a lacklustre performance throughout the ‘Leg 0’ events (the warm-up races which precede the Volvo Ocean Race itself), a fifth place finish for Leg 1 (Alicante to Lisbon) which included running aground on the approach to the finish line, at the time of writing Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag is in last place as they approach the Equator – and this after Witt loudly predicted that his super-experienced crew would excel at picking their way though the minefield that is the Doldrums.

Halfway from Lisbon to Cape Town and not all is well with the Scallywags as they struggle not only to catch up with leaders, but just stay in touch with the back markers. But, hey, this is yacht racing, and all offshore sailors well understand that it’s not over until the fat lady sings – and she’s not even warming up for her South African arrival aria, yet.

Witty, as he is often known, is ‘living the dream’ thanks to the sponsorship of Lee Seng Huang, executive chairman of Sun Hung Kai Financial Ltd, one of those nebulous organisations that offers “wealth management, brokerage, and capital markets services.” The pair formed a working relationship when multimillionaire Lee purchased the maxi racing yacht Ragamuffin 100 from Australian sailing veteran Sid Fischer. Lee bought the boat and kept the crew on the payroll, and together he and Witt have now sailed a number of races including the Rolex Sydney to Hobart.

It was the during biennial trip to San Fernando in the Philippines, a race organised by the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, that the Witty saga began in full force. Scallywag, as the yacht is now named, was accused by another contestant of omitting a mark of the course as the race left Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour. After a protest (disallowed) and a subsequent investigation, Witt retired from the race more than a month after the event.

Mere hours later, there was an announcement of Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag as the Hong Kong entry in the current Volvo Ocean Race. Witt had participated in the 1998 edition of the Race, and that experience left him with a lifelong ambition to come back and do the race “on my own terms.” But controversy has dogged the Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag team from the start, and left them with a social media backlash to the ‘Witt-icisms’.

The first of Witt’s gaffes happened before the race had even started. He declared that, “There is no room for women on my boat!” His argument being, “The least amount of people you can have on the boat is seven, so you want seven strong guys. I don’t want to carry the extra weight. We are here to win a yacht race, not be part of a social experiment.”

However, the racing rules for this edition of the VOR substantially encouraged the inclusion of female sailors, and so while an all-male crew was limited to just seven sailors, you could add in one to two female crew members without penalty, or run with a combination with five men/five women, or seven women plus one or two men, or an all-female crew of 11. So it was a no brainer for all the other teams to sign up women to their crew list. As a result of Witt’s comments, the team received a flurry of abuse from the female sailing community, and support for the team dwindled.

Witt then decided to change tack and rethink his strategy, and head hunted Olympic silver medallist Annemieke Bes from a rival team. But it was Dutchwoman Bes who was at the centre of Witt’s next major social howler. Humour on boats can be pretty basic, but this brash, no-nonsense, archetypal Aussie on SHK/Scallywag took it to a new level. In the age of social media where ‘life at the extreme’ is on show, the raw footage of Witt’s mock breakfast show was yet again another blunder that merely added fuel to the fire.

Witt starts the video clip by saying, “Adult Warning: Everything in this video segment will offend most sections of the public domain”, and boy was he was right! Inviting the only female onboard for advice on how to apply ointment to a man’s scrotum, and then subsequently demonstrating this, was deemed totally tasteless and inappropriate by many of the readers on social media. One Olympic female sailor posted, “Really!!!!??? In the current climate who would ever think that posting this is a good idea?”

But bad taste jokes aside; it is the sacking of Hong Kong sailor Tiger Mok from Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag that is possibly the team’s biggest blunder to date. Mok has been portrayed as the local pin up boy for the team, but was recently unceremoniously dropped from the team as they departed from the Lisbon stopover. Back in August when Mok was selected for the team, Witt hailed his appointment as “a triumph for Asian sailors, and the “face of the team” when we sailed into Hong Kong next January.” Hired as backup navigator, Mok, had sailed with Witt in the Hong Kong-Vietnam Race and China Coast Regatta in 2011, Witt said, “I’ve known him for a while and he’s a very smart guy and he’d be perfect for us.”
Mok was the first to acknowledge that the 45,000-nautical mile Volvo event would be a daunting step up for him, but he was ready for the challenge. Having worked hard for the team over the last three months, Mok was never really given the opportunity to shine in the navigator role he was employed to do. Rather he was lumbered with the additional role of shore manager, a position he had originally refused. But Mok is a committed team player and so he took on the additional responsibilities with gusto.

With an MBA and over 13 years of experience in project management and business operations, running the onshore programme was second nature to him. But the competitive world of professional sailing is a tough one, and involves a great deal of backbiting - poor leadership and fractured management have ended Mok’s VOR dreams.

What is most perplexing is the timing of the decision to drop Mok from the team just before the Hong Kong stopover. Who is going to be the role model for Asian sailors during the Hong Kong stopover? Witt is on record saying, “We are trying to get kids involved in the stopover [in Hong Kong] and one of the big things for them is if they see Tiger on the boat sailing.” With Mok no longer part of the team, who is going to connect to the local audience? Dongfeng team will be able to reach out to the local sailors, but it is a shame that the Hong Kong team will not be able to do the same.

The Volvo Ocean Race Village opens on the 17th January 2018 but the boats are not expected to arrive in Hong Kong from Melbourne until the 20th January. The Hong Kong In-Port race happens on the 27 January and the special Around the Island Race completes the HK series for the seven-boat fleet on the 28 January. Leg 5 has the yachts leaving Hong Kong for Guangzhou on the 1 February, where they will participate in an In-Port Race and then return to Hong Kong. Leg 6 starts on the 7 February 2018 when the yachts leave Hong Kong and head down to Auckland.