'Cracking regatta, cracking parties!'

by Guy Nowell on 25 Oct 2005 This year’s China Coast Regatta was voted a great success by the 300 plus sailors who participated in the event. Commodore Inge Strompf-Jepsen summed it up when she said, ' Great conditions, great courses and great competition.'

Although there were only 28 boats in the fleet this did not detract from the regatta as the cream of Asian sailing was present and the competition was fierce.

Winner of the event was Neil Pryde on his newly refurbished Hi- Fidelity. 'I brought Hollywood Boulevard from Ray Roberts and had the boat completely refurbished by DK Yachts in Malacca, Malaysia. This was the first time that we had her out to race and she performed superbly.'

Neil’s team were also first rate with the likes of John ‘Gundy’ Gunderson, Joe Spooner, Ed Smith, and Nick Partridge (all from the Oracle BMW America’s Cup squad), Bruce Clarke from Shockwave, and Mark D’Emilio, Sales Manager DK Yachts.

'Gundy’ admitted, 'yes, we had a pretty glam boat, but there was some great crew work out there and we had to work hard to stay in front. We have been nagging Neil for ages to get a new boat, and now we are really enjoying it.

Hi Fi will be going south with the Hainan Race, and then on to the Raja Muda and the King’s Cup. Although we are professional sailors, we sail these regattas (including the China Coast) more than anything because we love the Asian events. Right now I know plenty of crew lining up to get on a boat for some ‘out of season’ competition, away from the US and European circuits.’

Hot on their tail was the DK46 Drumstick, owned by Standard Life Asia CEO Robert Knight, and another baby from the DK Yachts yard in Malacca. Knight was delighted with the result. ‘The boat was delivered just a year ago, but we feel that she has never performed up to her numbers until now. We took out the generator and the air conditioning, lightening the boat by almost 150kg.

Combine this ‘diet’ with a new set of sails from Quantum (and David Eickmeyer from Quantum Malaysia), and we were going like a rocket.”

In third place was another locally crewed boat, Mandrake, with some top Hong Kong sailors on board including Mark Thornburrow on the helm - recently returned from a top ten finish in the Etchells Worlds 2005 – and Warwick Downes, Doyle Sails Manager for South East Asia.

Owners Nick Burns and Fred Kinmonth were very upbeat about Mandrake’s performance for the regatta. Kinmonth, with his usual dry sense of humour, summed up their performance: ‘now we only have three areas left to work on – crew work, tactics, and boat speed”

At the ‘shorter’ end of the fleet was the Sydney 38 Stella, chartered by Team Struan under the captaincy of former Hong Kong resident David Cullen. Team Struan is a rather fluid organisation that has over the last two years made charter appearances at Cork Week, the Scottish Series, and the China Coast Regatta. This edition included Gordon Gregor in the driving seat, and Jamie Boag telling him where to go. ‘Stella is a bit sticky in the light stuff’ admitted Gregor, ‘so our best results were on the second day when there was more breeze. Fourth overall was probably the best we could hope for under the conditions.’

Minnow among the IRC sharks was the mighty Ambush, a Hick 31 owned by Regatta Chairman Joachim Isler, Drew Taylor and Hakan Burgurlu. Isler thought the whole regatta was ‘cracking!’ and said so several times. ‘And the parties were cracking too!’ On the water, Ambush suffered from not being able to pace the bigger boats on the upwind legs. ‘We tended to get buried on the starts’ he said, ‘and every time that Drew Taylor really nailed it… there was a general recall! Any sort of lumpy sea slows us down – we really need dead flat water, but you don’t find that very often when the wind is blowing.’

Ambush crew also included Matthew Morgan, one time RHKYC Boatyard Manager, now with Oyster in England. Over three days Morgan became ‘more acquainted with a canting keel than I ever need to be again. I hope they don’t start putting them into Oysters!’

Jelik claimed Line Honours in six of the seven races – and at 76’ rightfully so. Crew line-up included Thierry Barot who swapped his China Team AC kit for a Jelik shirt for the weekend: ‘the China Coast racecourse is a tricky patch of water. The wind is shifty, with a lot of up-and-down, making for highly tactical racing. We worked very hard during this regatta, and the crew work on Jelik is excellent, but the level of competition was high and we had to settle for fifth place. There may be fewer boats out for a CCR than there were ten years ago, but the standard of sailing has gone up substantially.’

Another competitor in the IRC A fleet was Maina (6th) a Wauquiez Centurion 45s owned by Raphael Blot. ‘We are happy with her performance in her first regatta, and we were especially pleased with our upwind work. Now we just need to be a bit faster off the breeze.’

Paul Bankowski’s Ker 11.3 Jaywalker performed well for the first three races but waved goodbye to an overall result when she retired from races 4 and 5 with a broken main halyard.

Sam Chan’s Free Fire came in 8th overall, rather less of a performance than in previous years. ‘Our crew work round the cans isn’t as slick as it has been’ said crew boss Russ Parker,’ but the trip to Hainan will be a different matter. Watch this space!’

Gerry Daughton skipper of Outrageous (Dubois 44) said, ‘Outrageous is an old lady now – over 20 – and it is very hard to compete with the newer boats. But we are definately ‘outrageous’ when it come to parties.’

Denis Ma’s Rampage took most of the gun smoke in IRC Div B, but only ranked third overall on corrected time. As predicted, the real dogfight was between the two X-99s Dexter (Lowell Chang) and Getafix (Pierre le Pape). There was only one point in it going into the last day, but two bullets for Dexter on Sunday gave them the title.

IRC Premier Cruising was easily dominated by Marcel Liedts’ X-612 Hocux Pocux 2, with nothing worse than a 2nd place on the scorecard, leaving second spot for Moonblue 2 (Warwick 65, Peter Churchouse).

Ben Chong, owner of Xanadu II, won HKPN Div and Arthur Ho on GA managed a close second with C L Yu’s new Bavaria 39 Reef Knot coming third.

The Protest Committee (Ronnie McCracken, Tom Sheppard and Stephen Lam) and the Arbitrator (George Strome) had an easy time of it as there was not one red flag seen on the racecourse, and no protests lodged. Not that there wasn’t plenty of aggressive competition: RO Jimmy Farquar signalled three General Recalls altogether, two of them off the start of Race 2. ‘The breeze was a bit slow to arrive on Friday,’ said Farquhar, ‘but after that it was pretty easy stuff. There was big swing to the left after the start on Sunday
Morning and we had to move the finish line, but that was the major excitement from an RO’s point of view.’

12 boats will be on the water again on Thursday for the start of the Hainan Race, a 350-mile downhill slide to Sanya Bay on the southern tip of Hainan Island. Current record holder is Ffree Fire, and in the absence of any competition from Jelik or her new stable mate Boracay (formerly Enigma), that’s unlikely to change. The Hong Kong Observatory is offering force 5 from the east for Thursday’s start.