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a thousand words

HKISC Day 2 - Backe bites back

The Hong Kong Invitational Sportsboats championships ended today with a clear winner in the mixed SBR fleet. Peter Backe on Black Magic answered his critics with a superb display of downwind speed, picking up three consecutive bullets to push the overnight leader Frank van Kempen (Fly by Wire) into second place. 

(c) Cynthia Law/HKSA

 While the wind didn't quite reach the survival conditions of Saturday, a steady 18 knots meant that huge gains were available to those willing to live on the edge downwind, and some spectacular broaches were seen at both ends of the fleet. Brace Brace Brace, sailed by Paul Murphy, was seen after some gybes with crew sitting on the keel – if it was a dinghy, it might be called “capsized”! 

(c) Cynthia Law/HKSBA

With two days of strong winds it was clear which boats had been well maintained, as gear failure started to take its toll. A broken lower shroud ended Jens-Erik Olsen's (Red Herring) quest for a top three position, and a few broken mast tracks and lifting chainplates caused varying degrees of concern. Big gains on the second day were made by Northern Light (David Knight) and Catch 22 (Mark Bennett) by managing to sail all the races. The black Longtze of Gaetan Verhegge (Exocet) continued its storming pace by beating many of the Magic 25s on elapsed as well as corrected time.

The J80 fleet continued to be close, with a single point separating the top two boats. John Hodgson (J Chi) celebrated a hard earned victory with another bottle of Grey Goose Vodka for first place, with Steve Trebitsch on Jazz not quite doing enough to sneak past him. 

Peter Backe thanked the RHKYC for organising a fantastic regatta, and proposed that the event become an annual fixture for Asian sportsboats. With fabulous windy sailing conditions (and an improved economic climate!), it is hoped that next year will see a return of the foreign contingent and the same high quality competition that this year has enjoyed.

(c) Cynthia Law/HKSBA

Overall Results:

Sportsboats

1, Black Magic, Peter Backe, 7pts
2, Fly By Wire, Frank van Kempen, 10pts
3, Exocet, Gaetan Verhegge, 22pts

J80

1, J Chi, Jonathan Hodgson
2, Jazz, Simon Blore
3, Hakwati, Dan Tulberg

HKISC Day 1

The Hong Kong Invitational Sportsboats Championships started with a bang with strong winds, multiple breakages, and lots of very fast downwind legs. Race Officer Russ Parker set a mixture of windward/leeward and geometric courses off the coast of Lamma Island testing the reaching (and broach recovery) skills of the fleet.

(c) Joyce Ravara/HKSBA

Peter Backe and Frank van Kempen lived up to their pre-event billing by battling for the lead in the sportsboats fleet, each winning two races and setting up a match race for the overall victory tomorrow. The J80 fleet looks like a competition between the North Sails Hong Kong loft, with John Hodgson (crewed by Tim Somerville) just edging out Steve Trebitsch and Simon Blore on Jazz.

Most of the sportsboat fleet trialled new kites provided by Zoke and with winds topping at 25 knots they were all grateful for the crispy sailcloth. 

A total of 24 boats took part in the first four races of the championships, with three more to come. The Sportsboat Association is very grateful for the organisation of the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club and the sponsorship of Grey Goose Vodka, who provided day prizes to the top competitors.

Results after Day 1:
Sportsboats
1. Fly by Wire, Frank Van Kempen 6pts
2. Black Magic, Peter Backe 7pts
3. Exocet, Gaetan Verhaegge 19pts

J80
1. J Chi, John Hodgson 5pts
2. Jazz, Simon Blore 8pts
3. Hakwakti, Dan Tulborg 12pts

HKISC - Northern Light preparation...

Right, off to prep my boat by putting the stickers on - it's all about the photos. I promised ages ago to put up the new boat graphics, but things have beeen a little downgraded since then - anyway, here they are:

This is on the back of the t-shirts, but boat graphics are purely red tape! 

Team this weekend should be pretty fast, but we're rather hoping for 8-10knts as we're 70kg under weight. Given the forecast for 18-20knts, we may be a little slow upwind! The problem with the Lamma racetrack is that is purely a boatspeed venue with very constant wind direction and pressure, so no chance to shift hop as we normally do in Port Shelter! Still, I can't wait: 18knts downwind in a swell will be awesome, however light the crew, and we've got about 15 downwind legs to do. With a brand new kite.

HKISC - the excitement mounts

So while it's not quite what was planned (no shipping deal so few (no?) overseas entrants) we're still looking forward to a awesome weekend (13th/14th) of sportsboats racing. With the promise of sponsored kites for the mixed SBR fleet we've got 13 Magics racing, 2 Longtzes, an FT10 as well as the Hugh Welbourn/DSS "Brace Brace Brace".

Possibly the best Magic fleet turnout worldwide since the heyday of the HK fleet in terms of numbers, there is also some talent at the top end of the fleet. The favourite has to be reigning HK Magic Champion Frank van Kempen on "Fly by Wire", but he can expect to be pushed very hard by Peter Backe ("Black Magic") who has been pushing the envelope of sail development and Steve Bourne ("Merlin") who has finally quit complaining about the holes in his sails and brought a new set. Dark horses (literally - who would order an entirely black machine and then sail it in the HK summer sun?!) are the guys on "Bracex3", who have finally started showing some serious pace in strong breeze. Helmed (I think) by HK 470 Olympic contender Sam Sakai, the innovative horizontal lifting foil might prove to be the weapon it was promised to be. Or will it be difficult to handle in the expected 1m swell and fail to correct out the 5mins it gives to most of the rest of the fleet?

Reduced to a weekend event, with 7 races in forecast 17-20knt winds on the "world's" race  course off Lamma in the South China Sea, there should still be plenty of excitement. Oh yes, there are also some J80s racing in a one design fleet as well - almost forgot...

Results online here:
http://www.rhkyc.org.hk/article.aspx?c=2&a=1577
and tracks will be published here asap:
http://www.rhkyc.org.hk/article.aspx?c=2&a=1522

MR1: Mr Aggressive

The yacht club has traditionally organised a year long Match Racing regatta, which involved two boats on a Saturday morning, and some pretty fierce competition. However, with the purchase of six (!) brand new J80s and forming a match racing "class association", this year promises to be something special - no hanging around for the two boats to finish a one sided race, the chance to finish a regatta in a weekend, and a boat that is a little less tender to sail in a breeze.

To find crews for the extra boats, we had a training session last weekend aimed at beginner match racers, with a pre-seminar, drills on the water, racing, and excitingly a video debrief. I've put a team together for the season (I've been pretty excited for a while!) and jumped at the chance to try it out. Having never helmed in a match race before, it was a little nerve wracking but ultimately great fun. It turned out that having a team racing/small boat background was a great help - I seemed to adapt better to the large rudders and small turning circle of the boats, and perhaps had a bit of an advantage in the situations during the prestart. Still, we had some good racing, and managed to win every race apart from against the Singapore national team, who were in Hong Kong practicing! Not too much shame in that...

I learnt a huge amount match racing - the rules are the easy bit, it's the execution of them that matters much more.

• It's all situations, situations, situations - you must know going into a manouvre  how you are going to come out, and what you hope to gain from it. 
• Once you know what a situation should involve, execution is even more difficult. For instance, the dialup (which I'd assumed was just a simple head to wind move) involves a large amount of skill in judging your speed going into it, so that your position relative to the other boat allows you to hold them where you want them/get out of a port side trap.
• Time on distance - if you don't know how far away you are from the line, the final approach is near on impossible.
• Speed. If you've got it, even a bad start can be overcome and you can get back in touch - it gets you out of a lot of trouble! Luckily, I had an excellent main trimmer, and could rely on him to get the boat going fast upwind.
• On the short courses we do, there has to be something really special going on the left side of the beat to make it worthwhile to go for the pin. It's close to impossible to make up enough distance to cross the starboard tack boat at the top mark!
• I need to tell my crew what I'm up to prestart...

The race against the Singaporeans was a fantastic challenge. While I didn't cover myself in glory (penalty on entry for port/starboard, over the line at the start, and passed on the way to the finish line) there were a few glimmers of what is possible against challenging opposition! I managed to escape from a controlled position in the prestart and chose to lead back to the start, and also managed to gain enough on the first beat to almost cross at the top mark - probably helped by being over.

The other exciting bit was the video debrief - there is nothing like having a cameraman on the back of your boat, watching your team's every move and recording every conversation, and then having it replayed and your mistakes analysed in front of everybody afterwards! Luckily, I didn't swear/shout at my crew/fall out of the boat, but I did get a reputation as "Mr Aggressive" for the day - always chasing penalties!

Hopefully, the video should make it onto the internet pretty soon, and the season should have quite a good media presence if the sponsorship deal comes off...

Anyway, must get back to some bedtime reading with the Call Book.

New A Cappella, or the Michael Humphrey Manifesto

Those that knew me in the UK know that one of the things I loved was a cappella singing. After mucking around in college with a barbershop group (the comically camp Fitz Barbershop) I missed it enough when I moved to London to join another. After a chance meeting with a couple of ex-"Out of the Blue" and "In the Pink" chaps, we set up "In the Smoke" as a help group for graduated and recovering aca-holics.

Three years on, I'm now unfortunately no longer in London, and no longer a member. However, album three has just dropped into my inbox ("No Smoke without Fire", probably available by emailing these nice people: inthesmoke@gmail.com) and I'm driven by nostalgia and jealousy to try and define why I'm so excited!

One of the greatest things about ITS is that it is driven by both a huge passion for close harmony singing and a desire to push the boundaries. Not change or newness for the sake of it, but not conforming to traditional expectations for the sake of it either - doing things that make the music better. To this end, they (we) have to thank the talents of all the various arrangers in the group - people who take a song they enjoyed, find something new in it, bring it out in an arrangement for six/seven/eight parts, and make the music come alive again.

Undeniably (and I hope the rest of the arrangers will forgive me for this) the hero is Michael Humphrey. He couples outstanding musicianship with occasional slapstick, scholarly understanding of what he is doing with off the wall experimentation, and deep thought with childish wonder. I've lifted the quote below from an email of his about a particular arrangement (Don't Stop Believing by Journey, and recently popularised by the TV show Glee) but it gets across what he believes in.

"Yes, it's nothing more than a derivative but catchy piano riff with a sing-a-long chorus at the end, made by a 70s stadium rock but mostly studio-based band (modern equivalent is Coldplay without the endearing home-county-ness and popular politics).  The kind of thing fat white Americans crushed half-empty beercans to and clapped their hands on the beat to, repackaged and sold to their kids a generation later.  Obviously the kind of thing any self-respecting US college a cappella group must have in their repertoire.

Just search on youtube, and you'll find so many pedestrian versions that seem to please the crowd.  Most of them insist on having some walking nothing come to the front and attempt to vocalise the guitar solo.  [...]

As of tomorrow night, we make this an In The Smoke song, not a Glee song (it's long since ceased to be a Journey song).  And I think we should nail our colours to the foreheads of the front row by building in some heavily sarcastic choreo, all the while bossing the singing.  Come with ideas and opinions.  (and a glucking pencil)

A small part of me really cares about this.  A different small part of me that wants to be this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIoSTbPt_PI&feature=related

What bollocks :)
Michael

PS - I do think it'll be good though"

It's not just about style, although the reaction against over polished, over produced, cliche ridden (mainly American) collegiate a cappella is real. It's about making a studio album represent the live performance, communicating the same passion/emotion that the front (and back) row experiences at a gig through vocal painting as well as facial expression. It's about realising that the most critical audience member is yourself, and you're singing - if you don't believe in and love what you are doing, what is the point?


P.S. If any Smokies actually read this - I apologise!