Beach Balls and Bumper Cars - 2nd China Cup

by Guy Nowell, Sail-World Asia on 1 Nov 2008 The second edition of the CCIR wound up on Monday after four days of racing. A passage race from Hong Kong to Longcheer, and then five ‘cans’ races over the next three days.

Pride and joy of the China Cup is the fleet of Beneteau 40.7s - up this year from 10 to 30 boats – which rather overshadowed the other racing classes. Top finishers in the division, and winners of The China Cup, were the Japanese Team Karasu, with Team Normar (Norway) in second place and Koufu Japan (last years’ 40.7 division winners) in third.

Top Chinese entry was the China Navy, finishing half way down the division in 14th place. The leaders in the division were finishing windward/leeward races around the 1h 20m mark, and the back markers were barely making the 2h cut-off, suggesting that some of the local entries could probably do with some sailing practice before next year’s event.

Indeed, having been out on the race course (racing in the IRC division) the ‘view from the rail’ confirms this suspicion.

Never mind – as Robin Wyatt, Senior Broker at Simpson Marine said, 'I can’t remember when I last had so much fun at a regatta – it didn’t matter where you were in the fleet, there was always someone to race against right alongside.'

After taking home The China Cup for the Grand Prix boats last year, Ray Roberts chartered a 40.7 to defend his title.

The Quantum Racing boys rolled home in fourth place after four days of racing, and Roberts ruefully admitted that arriving in Hong Kong and getting on board the boat was 'the first time that any of the crew (himself included) had ever been on a Beneteau 40.7' and conceded that a little more practice might have been a good idea. One of the crew found the switch from an IRC Grand Prix boat to a 40.7 'interesting. You go over one wave and it bounces… and then it goes on bouncing… again and again, just like a beach ball'.

Another Quantum sailor was less than happy with the state in which their chartered boat was supplied – 'we spent two days scraping barnacles off the hull, and had to have the boat lifted twice,' he said. That’s definitely something for the organisers to think about – when supplying chartered one-design boats, they MUST all be in equally pristine condition.

12 entries in the one and only IRC division ranged from Adam Wu’s JV 52 Microlab Moonlight Shadow down to Anthony Root’s Columbia 30 Red Kite, which looked like a rather one-sided competition.

But the crew of Men at Work, a new Archambault 35 skippered by RHKYC Commodore Warwick Downes, were up for the challenge, and Nick Southward’s J-109 Whiskey Jack had a good crack at it too. After five races the latter were only 2.5 points between the top four boats, with Denis Ma’s Tripp 40 Rampage making a surprise appearance on the leader board.

In the end Men at Work took the trophy, 4 points ahead of Moonlight Shadow who were in turn just 0.5 points in front of the Whiskey drinkers.

Many of the HKPN division, last preserve of those with pretensions to racing but unwilling to pay for an IRC certificate, fell by the wayside when Monday’s race start was delayed by light air – heading home to Hong Kong in the sunshine.

Torben Christensen’s Team Thinkpad Authority, a venerable Supercraft IOR design, prevailed with 5 points from 5 races.

Undoubtedly the China Cup has made some big improvements since last year – Immigration procedures were quick and efficient (there was even a Yellow Line to stand behind), and the event felt as if it was a lot more to do with sailing that previously.

Race Management supplied by the RHKYC was, as ever, impeccable. RO Russ Parker and ARO Gaston Chan, and the rest of the crew (Alex Johnston, Lindsay Lyons, Iris Yang and all the Club marine staff on the Cheoy Lee launches and mark boats) didn’t miss a beat, and their contribution to the regatta was invaluable.

Last year’s China Cup featured so many 'sideshows' that the regatta itself was in danger of becoming a sideshow too.

There was an art show, a music festival, an economic forum, a wine tasting, a golf tournament and more. Some of these events were repeated this year, but all the social events were moved from Da Mei Sha – some 45 minutes away by bus – to regatta central at Longcheer Yacht Club. It really is a problem running a regatta when the available accommodation is so far away – it’s the equivalent of basing the China Coast at Middle Island (Hong Kong) and having all the crews stay at the Airport Hotel.

This is a very real problem, but quite how China Cup can solve it is not immediately clear – apart from building a hotel at Longcheer (next to the regatta) or moving the regatta to Da Mei Sha (next to the existing hotels)!

It was a definitely a regatta, which is not what the event felt like last year, but with only one IRC division and no Grand Prix boats at all it now looks like becoming a Beneteau event. .

To move forward from here, and start to garner some credibility as a serious and worthwhile event, the China Cup needs to ‘open up’.

Interviewed on the dock after the last race, one crew member from Whisky Jack said, 'to make this a high class event and attract top quality international names, the China Cup needs to promote racing in top class racing boats – not medium-class cruisers'.

Removing the 8.5m entry limit would be a good start, and making sure that the regatta dates don’t conflict with more established events would help as well. Oh, and a little media visibility outside China might not be a bad thing either.

That’s all folks: like the Norwegian sailor said at the prizegiving ceremony – 'we’ll be back. We want to see all those Beneteaus playing bumper cars on the start line'.