HK to Puerto Galera Race: Mandrake III wins Overall title
by Guy Nowell 22 Apr 2019 03:08 PDT
17-22 April
RHKYC Puerto Galera Race 2019 © Guy Nowell / RHKYC
The inaugural Hong Kong to Puerto Galera Race has suffered a major auto-destruct among the entries. The two IRC 0 boats, Antipodes and Standard Insurance Centennial, have both finished at Puerto Galera – the ‘full distance’ finish.
All other times were taken at the ‘short finish’ that extends south and west from Limit Point (south of Manila Bay). IRC 1 has one surviving entry, Mandrake III (Fred Kinmonth and Nick Burns), with Zanzibar, Surfdude and Rampage having retired.
IRC 2 (Blackjack, Jinn, Decathlon Aya) has wiped itself out entirely. Moonblue II retired from IRC Premier Cruising to hand the honours to Shahtoosh (Peter Cremers). Darling and Generations retired from the HKPN division, leaving Michael Ashbrook’s Sitka to pick up the title. Avant Garde (C Y Seah) is still racing, but unlikely to finish before the 1800h cutoff today.
So here are the complete results:
IRC Division 0
1. Antipodes
2. Standard Insurance Centennial
IRC Division 1
1. Mandrake III
IRC Premier Cruising
1. Shahtoosh
HKPN
1. Sitka
IRC Overall
1. Mandrake III
Retired, but continued to Puerto Galera:
Darling
Generations
Moonblue II
Complicated calculations to determine the Overall winner (since two boats finished at Puerto Galera, and the rest at the Limit Point line) have given the Overall title to Fred Kinmonth’s Mandrake.
Just five finishers from 15 starters makes for a rather small fleet, and Puerto Galera is such a very nice place to finish an offshore race! Well, for one thing, there was the weather. In the tradition of its predecessor, the San Fernando Race, the dash to Puerto Galera started just before Easter in order to take advantage of the holiday break. Easter is of course calculated on the lunar calendar, meaning that it moves around, just like Chinese New Year. This year, Easter was ‘late’, so the transition from the northeast monsoon to the southwest was still in progress. The fleet left Hong Kong and sailed into uncharacteristic southerly breezes – “It isn’t usually like this!”
Sailing on board Geoff Hill’s Santa Cruz 72, Antipodes, your reporter found it distinctly odd as we were continuously headed sailing out of Hong Kong on port tack, and working hard to preserve southerly progress without getting sucked into a big area of very soft and confused winds to the east.
There was plenty of breeze where we were, and flat sea, but it was always a question of when and how to get back towards the Philippines. There were periods of wind below 10kts, but for the most part the order of the day was a Code 0 and 10-12 kts, with the mightly Antipodes continuously beating the breeze by a knot or more.
Having skirted the Nothing Area, and closing the coast abeam Capones, we suddenly went from 11kts to lemons on the clock in front of Subic Bay, and performed a huge 360 degree turn while looking for a zephyr (any damn zephyr!) to jumpstart us again. Eventually the breeze returned, and the leg past Corregidor and the entrance to Manila Bay was properly feisty. No 1 jib, close hauled – and then in no more than a moment – nothing. More lemons. A last disruptive lull abeam of Limit Point, and then the last 50nm from Punto Fuego to the corner at Calatagan before heading across Balayan Bay to Puerto Galera was a spirited thrash to windward.
Antipodes had to finish before 12.00 midday to beat Standard Insurance Cenrennial on corrected time, powering across the line with just 12 minutes to spare, and after 741nm sailed.
It’s a long way to Puerto Galera. 650nm by the most direct route from Hong Kong, making it the second-longest offshore race on the RHKYC calendar. Hong Kong to Vietnam is 670nm, the Rolex China Sea Race to Subic Bay is 570nm, and the trip to Hainan is a mere overnighter at 390nm. So where does that put this race, given that the now-retired San Fernando Race at 480nm was considered to be a warm-up event for the offshore newbies, a sort of feeder or shakedown for the China Sea event. The question is whether the distance to PG, and the fact that a fleet of 15 starters was whittled down to only five finishers – mostly on account of time - will affect entries going forward. That’s a thought for another day and another story when the breeze has dropped in the Main Bar back at RHKYC.