Please select your home edition
Edition
Belvedere

Boase Cohen & Collins Interschools Sailing Festival 2024

by Guy Nowell 12 Mar 2024 22:36 PDT 09-10 March 2024
Boase Cohn & Collins Interschools Sailing Festival 2024 © RHKYC / Guy Nowell

It was cold, it was wet, it had 29kt bullets coming through the Middle Island gap, and it was as much fun as you can have on the water with a fleet of Picos, Fevas and Fusions, and 214 young sailors in 26 teams from 19 schools. Yee-hah! Welcome to two days of three-boat team racing based out of RHKYC Middle Island. Why there aren't more team racing events in the sailing calendar is a mystery.

Saturday was chilly and gusty - very. After a good deal of consideration, RO Elberti Uiterwaal-Postma reduced the usual vaguely trapezoid course to a triangle, something like 0.3nm overall. Yes, this is a short, sharp, racing programme! The lulls were down in the 0-2 kts range, and the gusts were ferocious. The best tacticians were the ones who spent all the time looking towards Repulse Bay, and the best helms were those that could dump a mainsheet really quickly. Even so, there must have been records broken for capsizes in a given length of time.

The meteo played havoc with the racing programme, which needed constant adjustment 'on the fly'. Thank goodness for excellent radio comms between the RO and the change-over police, and the calm and clear announcements from DJ Kevin who spins a good tune at the same time.

Sunday was colder, and equally gusty, with the addition of rain showers and an almost continuous fine English drizzle. By 16.00h the programme was down to the short strokes, four schools in sudden-death 'finals' for the honours. These races produced some real hammer-and-tongs team racing that had all spectators on the edge of their very damp seats. Winners of the Feva division were Hong Kong Academy over French International School, and ISF and HK International School in 3rd and 4th places. The Pico/Fusion division was won by Chinese International School 2 from Jockey Club Ti-I College, with Meisha Bilingual School and CIS 1 completing the podium.

Organisationally, this was a tough one. Logically, just one complete Round Robin for demanded 148 races, but that was never going to happen. Some clever maths supported by excellent race management produced results from 78 races - which, given the weather was nothing short of a miracle.

There's a big gallery of action-packed photos here: www.guynowell.com/-/galleries/new-gallery/2024-boase-cohen-collins-interschools-sailing-fe To download FREE lo-res images, just hover over a thumbnail and then click on the 'down' arrow that appears. To order hi-res files or prints, click on the shopping cart.

Many thanks to the huge number of event management volunteers who kept everything going both on and off the water, to the Middle Island staff who set up, break down, and keep everyone fed in the bit in the middle, and of course to the sponsors Boase Cohen & Collins who went over-and-above by presenting the two winning teams with Sailing Scholarship cheques for HK$10,000. Bravo, and thank you.

Related Articles

Team Racing Worlds at Newport, RI, overall
Corinthian Yacht Club puts on top notch performance to win Sustained winds in the low 20-knot range and choppy seas brought on another challenging day in the final stretch of the 2025 Team Racing World Championship. Posted on 2 Jun
Team Racing Worlds at Newport, RI, Day 3
Epic breeze cuts racing short; clear division between teams sets scene for final day Sunny skies met big breeze on Day 3 but by 12:30 p.m. racing was postponed, and as the wind built to 25+, the Race Committee abandoned racing at 3:00 p.m. Posted on 1 Jun
Team Racing Worlds at Newport, RI, Day 2
Consolidation In the Ranks: U.S. Teams Lead A thrilling action-packed series of races on Day 2 of the 2025 Team Racing World Championship saw the three teams representing the United States consolidate at the top of the leaderboard. Posted on 31 May
Team Racing Worlds at Newport, RI, Day 1
Tricky conditions & challenging 2v2 format tests Team Racing fleet Gray skies, intermittent rain and shifty light winds were not enough to dampen the energy and enthusiasm on Narragansett Bay for Day 1 of the Team Racing World Championship under way at Harbour Court. Posted on 30 May
76th Wilson Trophy at West Kirby
24 teams included five from the USA and four from Ireland Thirty-four of the best teams in the world competed over two and a half days for the coveted Wilson Trophy, including five teams from the USA and four from Ireland. The event used a Swiss League round robin format followed by the knockout stages. Posted on 29 May
All set at the 2025 Team Racing Worlds
12 teams ready to battle it out at New York Yacht Club Last time Pete Levesque raced in a Team Racing World Championship was 2011, in Schull, Ireland, when he was a skipper on Team Extreme representing the New York Yacht Club. Posted on 28 May
Optimist Team Racing at Oxford
'Team Gust Busters' wins the Ramus Trophy 'Team Gust Busters' won the Ramus Trophy after claiming victory at the IOCA (UK) Team Racing Championships at Oxford Sailing Club on 17th-18th May 2025. Posted on 20 May
Puget Sound sailing, Etchells, J/70s, Cup news
Seeking Goldilocks conditions on Puget Sound, Etchells NAs, J/70 U.S. Nationals, AC38 news As the saying goes, 'you don't know unless you go'. While I've mostly heard this phrase applied to climbing, skiing, and mountaineering, four late-winter and springtime races on Puget Sound this year exemplified the fact that this line. Posted on 20 May
RTYC Cumberland Cup overall
Royal Thames Yacht Club defend the title The final day of the Cumberland Cup with nine teams from across the globe, saw an intense battle to secure the final place in the Gold Group before a double round robin to decide who would lift the trophy from 1781. Posted on 19 May
StFYC repeats as Women's 2v2 Team Race Champs
Being the captain for competitive adult team sport is often a thankless task Being the captain for competitive adult team sport is often a thankless task involving a lot of emails, texts and phone calls to coordinate a group of busy people with multiple conflicting priorities. Posted on 19 May
PredictWind - GPS 728x90 BOTTOMArmstrong 728x90 - MA Foil Range - BOTTOMLloyd Stevenson - Catalyst GT 1456x180px BOTTOM