J/99 JUICE crushing it in Hong Kong

J/99 JUICE crushing it in Hong Kong © J-Boats

JUICE, the only J/99 currently in Hong Kong, continued her winning ways with victory in the IRC 2 category of the Aberdeen Boat Club opening regatta last weekend. Comprising of three races over two days JUICE faced stiff competition from the fleet of seven boats.

Saturday Challenges

Saturday dawned light and somewhat westerly forcing a reverse course into Lamma Island for the first windward leeward. This provided unusual and close racing with JUICE and ZESSt finishing 45 seconds apart after an hour and twenty minutes, having taken differing sides of the track. Thereafter, a thunderstorm and lightning show over Hong Kong Island created a change of wind direction through the southerly quadrant and then back again to an easterly direction where the wind finally settled. After a lengthy delay, the course was relaid, and a more familiar route was taken. As the breeze had come up JUICE had changed to a J2 jib, which proved very costly as the wind faded in the start sequence. Given that now there was a 3-lap race, the team had to change back to the J1 jib on the first run and cope with a stuck kite halyard on the drop. ZESST was gone and INTRIGUE as well, leaving JUICE in 3rd and work to do on Sunday.

Sunday Island Tour

Islands races are long and, in light breeze, there are plenty of restarts in the wind shadows. Good job as JUICE ran into some plastic and lost a lot of time on the first beat. Going hard into Beaufort Island and finding a familiar breeze line brought JUICE back into the race only to lose ground again rounding Fury Rocks. JUICE stayed very high on the run and squeezed around Po Toi island to find ZESST trapped in a wind hole on the other side of the channel. Meanwhile, veteran yacht GAMBIT was hard on our tail. The three boats finished 40 seconds apart after three and a half hours of racing giving GAMBIT the Islands Race win and JUICE the regatta win!