A $1000000 Sail

 Last weekend marked the Hebe Haven Yacht Club 24hr Charity Dinghy race. Every year outward bound enter a team into the event, and this year we were asked to come along and sail a few shifts in the race. So I was expecting a pokey wee event with a few diehard sailing teams out of a small club. Turns out this is a huge event in Hong Kong. 44 teams were signed up, and the club dinghy park was taken over by hundreds of stalls and food tents. There was a crane so that the TV crews could get good shots for the news, tv display boards showing live results from the race. And the teams were not made up of diehards. Some of the competitors were ex Americas Cup crew members, and even the 13 year old kids were pro! And the real stars of the show were the two guys who each sailed the full 24hrs on their own in Picos! The event raises over $1000000 every year! As I was the most experienced sailor in the team I was asked to helm the start. It was pretty intense, the startline was right next to the pontoons which were lined with hundreds of spectators and a couple of TV camera crews. And there was a commentator blasting out over the whole harbour.



The wind was, as we say in the UK, light and shite. And thats an understatement. It would shift 90 degrees every 30 seconds or so and was a rubbish 2 - 0 mph. As this seems to be the usual wind conditions in Hong Kong, the locals got stuck straight in and started raking in the laps. Anyhoo I managed to wrestle the dodgy old 420 round the course a few times in my first 3 hours, and by the time I managed to swap with someone we were in a not too shabby 23rd out of 44.

Sean and I were asked to come back to sail from 4 - 6am, so we did the sensible thing, and headed to the boozer. Unfortunately by the time I got back we somehow seemed to have dropped to 40th.....  Anyhoo, sailing in the dark was amazing! It was quite hard to tell whether or not you were moving, but eventually the marks got closer.  After our middle of the night sail, and pub trip, I was ready just to crash back at the flat, so I missed the end of the race. But the whole thing was pretty amazing. There was a really good atmosphere over the whole club, and the event was brilliantly organised and best of all was great fun and raised a tonne of money. I've never seen anything like it in the UK. It certainly seems to be an incredibly successful event, and I'd love to see someone try and do something like it in Scotland.

There's not too much else to report I'm afraid. We're going out on our first expedition tomorrow. A two day camping course with an international school from Hong Kong. I'll let you know how it goes.