After an exciting windward beat out of Hong Kong’s iconic Victoria Harbour, the boats have settled down to a thrilling fast ride south towards Vietnam.
The favoured line honours boat, Syd Fisher’s Ragamuffin 100 is leading the 12 boat fleet in the 673nm race to Nha Trang on the eastern coast of Vietnam. Alive, the 66ft Reichel Pugh is now 70nm behind Ragamuffin after a neck to neck battle in the harbour making most people wonder if it was going to be like that all the way to Vietnam.
Winds are currently 20 to 25kts as predicted and all the yachts are planing along between 9 and 18kts boats peed. Minute by minute updates are available on the live online tracking by Yellowbrick at http://www.rhkyc.org.hk/hkv15tracking.aspx.
At 1630hrs Hong Kong time today, Ragamuffin 100 had only 250nm to go and is well within striking distance of the race record. She needs to finish just before 0800hrs tomorrow morning to break the record that her 90’ namesake Ragamuffin 90 set in 2013.
Superb performance from the new boat in Hong Kong, Black Baza, skippered by Steven Manning. This Ker 41 boat was launched only two weeks ago and proving to be a speed machine already. Black Baza is now leading IRC handicap and 5th fastest boat.
Antipodes owned by Geoff Hill and Sam Chan’s FreeFire are having a race within a race – barely 1nm between the two of them. Antipodes is a larger but heavier 72ft boat and FreeFire is a TP52.
Tipsy Easy, a Beneteau 50 cruiser racer is leading the IRC performance division with 475nm to go; over 200nm behind Ragamuffin 100.
Avante Garde Joshua Cole’s Archambault 35 is trailing the fleet but leading on IRC handicap Division 2.
ARK323 another TP52 is fast coming up through the fleet after having to return to the start with mechanical problems.
– RHKYC Media
