(Hong Kong, China)- Guy Nowell, from Sail-World Asia, filed this report from the side deck of the J/109 WHISKEY JACK during the regatta.
Team WHISKEY JACK started the day with 22 kts across the deck, and the crew all ready to get at it after yesterday’s wash-out opener to the China Cup International Regatta 2010. And then, 10 minutes before the start, a split head-foil required emergency maintenance that took rather longer than the time available. Off went the Beneteau 40.7s on a windward-leeward course, off went the HKPN and FE26 divisions, and then off went IRC Racing and Cruising. Sadly, WHISKEY JACK scored a DNS.
And so to the second race, a big circle course (15 nm) around some of the islands in Daya Bay. Big breeze to start, a beat to a windward mark, a code zero bear-away to the south east corner of the course, a beat north and then a shy spinnaker reach back to the finish – and that was when we blew out our biggest a-sail while humming downwind at 10+ kts, hanging on to the coat tails of the A35 just in front of us, and the A40 just in front of that. We ‘cruised’ home (after all, we are sailing in the IRC Cruising division) under a normaler kite – and, for the record, scored second in division. Back at the dock, and there was plenty of customers for the UK-Halsey service department.
We still haven’t worked out why the Opening Ceremony was held exactly half way through a four-day regatta, but such niceties of terminology disappeared like the skin off a mast man’s hands when competitors were bused to a local sports stadium to find a ceremony of almost Olympic (well, at least Asian Games) proportions waiting for us.
Quite evidently the China Cup has tapped into a bottomless well of money, and hoop-la is what they are spending it on. All of us who witnessed the CCIR 2007 Closing Ceremony thought it was huge – literally. But tonight’s show eclipsed it utterly, as regatta crews were ushered into a sports stadium by pom-pom waving schoolgirls, marshaled under the stands, and then paraded into the stadium, every wave and smile recorded for posterity by TV cameras, and escorted to the VIP seats.
A band played the Chinese anthem, the Chinese and CCIR flags were ceremonially raised, and on came the dancers, the acrobats, the fire-eaters and the drummers. There was a massed-semaphore display, and a dancer who threaded her way through the fountain jets that sprang up from the ground. Then part of the stadium flooded, and in came the jet skis. Some of us were beginning to think that the lions were next, and Caesar would be giving the thumbs-down to anyone who hadn’t done a spell on a winch today. There was a high diver who dropped from an unreasonably high crane in unreasonably shallow water (re-appearing accompanied by mermaids), and a gigantic fan-shaped fountain back-lit by a laser show. And at the end of it all a grand finale of dancing flowers, dancing birds, a local pop singer, bungee-swingers hanging off the stadium roof, giant streamers, and the giant blue bouncing balls (definitely not allowed at the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens!).
It was a huge, colorful and fantastic spectacle. It rocked the thousands of people in the stadium, and sent away a great many China Cup sailors with big smiles on their faces. After all that attention, they are excused for thinking that they are now all heroes and world class athletes when in fact they are participants in a regatta that lives more on appearance than substance, and has failed to attract a Grand Prix division at even a regional level since its first running in 2007. But this is China, where self-confidence and money are everything. Spent a lot of money, and tell everyone that you (and they) are great, and enough people will believe you.
There is an uncomfortable ‘disconnect’ between the undeniably spectacular show that we saw at the stadium tonight and the reality of a event that can muster only three boats (total) into an ‘IRC Racing’ class and lumps all the rest into IRC Cruising. It’s smoke and mirrors, a way of disguising the shortcomings of a fairly undistinguished local regatta and passing it off as a major international event.
We are not under any illusion that the show tonight was funded by the China Cup – it was an extravaganza that had ‘state-sponsored bread and circuses’ written all over it – but think of it this way: if the China Cup can afford to throw a multimillion dollar splash like they did tonight, then why do they even bother to charge regatta entry fees and sell party tickets, and why do they spend very little money on maintaining their One Design fleet (and its sails), the very fleet that they charter out to the visitors whose presence is then used to leverage the ‘international’ image of the regatta.
Tonight we all watched funds go up on smoke – or down the drain – that could have been much better applied to the improvement of the China Cup International Regatta itself. Which, after all, is the whole point, isn’t it?
Of note, WHISKEY JACK did manager to recover, sail the rest of the series and secure a 3rd overall in IRC Cruising Class! Also of note, Chicago Yacht Club sailors competed as one of two U.S. teams represented at the China Cup International Regatta. "Team Chicago" was led by Michael Mayer, owner and driver of the J/105, KASHMIR, and an active participant in the Rolex Big Boat Series, Key West Race Week, Chicago NOOD, the Centomiglia in Italy, and no less than 28 Chicago Yacht Club Races to Mackinac. Mayer was be joined by the following crew who've been seen recently sailing on J/111s, J/105s and J/109s on the Lakes- George and daughter Andrea Miz, Steve Henderson, kite goddess Karen Gottwald, Mike and Kate Kennedy and Mike Mayer. At the end of the day? They had fun! The South Africans seemed to have their number, but that's another story to tell for another day. For more China Cup sailing information.
