Yacht club’s Far-Eastern adventure
They're on a boat
From the 27th to 31st of October 2016, the 10th China Cup International Regatta was hosted in Shenzhen, attracting over 140 teams from all over the world including Russia, the USA, Australia and Germany, amongst others. Imperial College Yacht Club (ICYC) sent out Team Imperial, comprised of students and alumni from Imperial, Oxford and Cambridge Universities. They were participating as the only British boat in the Regatta, the first time in seven years a British boat has competed in the event.
The crew consisted of nine members, brought together by Bob Xu, the president of ICYC, and skippered by Robert Page, an Imperial alumni and a member of the Royal Ocean Racing Club. After a few days practicing together as a team for the first time, the racing kicked off with a day passage race from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, where the majority of the racing was held. Despite being agonisingly close to the finish, the passage race was called off due to the lack of wind before any of the First 40.7 class could finish. After navigating Chinese immigration, the team managed to get to the hotel and got some much deserved rest to ready themselves for the races to come.
Over the next three days, competing with a host of experienced teams, including professionals from New Zealand and Beneteau America, the Imperial boat performed extremely well in their first international regatta and first time racing together. After the four days of racing, thanks to strong racing tactics and excellent teamwork onboard (and despite frustration from changeable conditions), Team Imperial managed to achieve positions of 9th, 15th, 19th, 11th and 13th. This gave an impressive overall placement of 14th out of 25, beating Beneteau Asia, as well as crews from Russia, Canada, Germany and Australia amongst others.
ICYC would like to take this opportunity to thank the Italian renewable energy firm Chemtech Solar, especially its Managing Partner, Ms. Chery Zeng, for her generous funding to make this journey possible.
ICYC is recognised as the only student-led yacht club in London. ICYC’s next race will be April 2017 in France, attending the EDHEC Sailing Cup (Course Croisière EDHEC), also known as the biggest student sailing regatta in Europe. This will be a historical entry as the last time Imperial participated in EDHEC was back in 1980s.
