Twelve budding young sailors from Harrow Hong Kong competed for the first time in the recent Boase Cohen and Collins Inter Schools Sailing Festival (10-11 March).
The two day competition, organised by the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, saw 24 teams from 18 Hong Kong schools take part in a team racing competition in RS Feva and Pico boats.
Charlie (Year 6, Banks) explained: “Team racing involves each team, or school, racing three boats each around at the same time around a preset race course, racing head to head with the aim of maintaining the highest combination of positions as a team.
“The basic tactics are to try and facilitate all your team members into a highest positions on the race track. We therefore needed to solve problems collaboratively to score.”
The 12 Harrow sailors (ranging from Years 6-10) were new to the team racing format, and underwent a pre-regatta training weekend under the tutelage of a RHKYC coach to help bring them up to speed on the rules and tactics, as well as helping them refine their helm and crew roles in the boats in their new pairs.
At the event itself, both Harrow A and Harrow B teams had difficult starts in the Pico division, losing the first three of their races. But with true Harrow determination, they fought back with Harrow A going on to defeat Hong Kong International School with all three of their boats finishing ahead of the HKIS trio.
Charlie surmised: “We progressed confidently, and occasionally just were just pipped at the post with dying breeze. In our last race of the regatta Harrow A versus Harrow B provided the opportunity us to show how much we had learnt progressed through the regatta.
“This newly formed sailing team at Harrow is a young team, including Year 6 pupils and with many bright years ahead of them in this competition.”
Miss Nikki Woodroffe, Deputy Head of Extra-Curricular and External Affairs at Harrow Hong Kong, echoed Charlie’s thoughts.
“The Harrow Hong Kong team was a young team which showed a lot of promise. It was the School’s first time competing at this event, following on Harrow’s participation in the Four Peaks Race last month, and the pupils learned a great deal and improved as they went on which was wonderful to see.”