Asia Cup Report

[flyandice]

After a week I'm about over jet lag and up for reporting on the big trip to Siberia for the Asia Cup regatta.  To get to Lake Baikal in early April Mercedes and I flew two hours to JFK where we met Deb Whitehorse, Danny Connell and Ron Sherry for the 10 hour flight to Moscow.  We got there early in the morning then had a 10 hour layover at the airport waiting to catch the evening flight for another 6 hour ride to Irkutsk, the capital of Siberia.  The original plan was then to hop on a bus for the 6 hour ride up to regatta site on the lake.  Fortunately the container with the European boats, including ours which is stored in Germany with Jorg Bohn, was a day late so the regatta was delayed a day and we spent the night in Irkutsk getting much needed rest before making the bus trip the next day.  Irkutsk is a city of about 640,000; a main stop on the Trans-Siberian railroad about two-thirds of the way between Moscow and Vladivostok on the Pacific coast.  It's a big, empty country. 

The bus ride up to the lake went through tundra/grassland that looked like eastern Wyoming.  The bus dodged free-range cattle and horses, probably a real driving hazard at night.  The last 15 miles along the west side of the lake was a bumpy rock road.  The bus had a short wheelbase with a ton of luggage and people toward the back, so at speeds above 20 miles an hour the front end would go into a porpoise and then slowed to a crawl to get stabilized.

Lake Baikal is about the size of Lake Michigan, but is almost a mile deep in places so is the largest freshwater lake in the world.  It's surrounded by low mountains that create notoriously tricky winds in winter and summer.

Our accommodations were pretty good considering the remote, unpopulated location.  The "resort" had a main building for dinning and drinking, a couple of three story buildings with rooms and several individual cabins with a couple of beds and a bath.  This was on a barren, rocky hill about 2/3 of a mile up the slope from the launch site.

We sailed on three feet of ice on a 4-5 mile wide channel between the west shore and a 20-30 mile long island on the west side of the lake.  The ice had hard, drifted snow coverage of about 40% which required a lot of steering during the races.  Some of the drifts were over 6 inches deep early in the week, but the ice was almost clear on the day we left.  It was below freezing at night and above during the day.  The winds were as advertised; calm to 20-25 in the same hour with 90 degree shifts during some races.  One Opti race sailed near the launch site had light winds for the first race, a half hour of dead calm, then they swapped ends without moving the marks and sailed a breezy race the other way.

There were 44 boat registered, but most races were sailed with 35 to 38.  Over half were Russian boats and the rest came in the container from European countries and the US.  Ron was in full control of the regatta.  He won six of the eight races.  Martin Schneider, G-679, managed to beat him in one race and Ron had a DNF for his throwout when the plank separated from the hull.  Danny started back in the pack but consistently move up and finished 9th and 10th in the last two races.

The drifts were tough on the boats and skippers.  We all got banged and bruised flying over drifts in stiff winds.  At times the boats would go airborne then land 5 or 10 degrees off heading which I had never experienced before.  There were several broken boats, but no serious collisions.  Christian Seegers, G-555, was giving Ron a good chase in one heat and spun out with both rounding the leeward mark together.    His rig collapsed and he ended up under the hull with bruised ribs.

Starting positions involved more luck than usual.  Often one side had more drifted snow.  I had two 7th finishes in a row that put me twice starting at the base of a 20-foot wide drift.  Fortunately the runners rode on top of the hard snow with an empty boat.  I was disqualified in one heat.  We all took the lay line to the windward mark in the first lap and found big drifts on that course.  On the second lap I could see Danny ahead of me plowing through drifts on the lay line and thought I could catch him by tacking up the middle.  My plan was working until the last tack when I got hung up under the boom.  By the time I got my head clear on the port side I was looking at the darling mark dead ahead and it was too late to miss it.  Ergo, DSQ.  The Europeans always set the course with darling marks about 30 yards inside the main marks.

The disqualification put me on the far right in the 35th spot for the next race.  There was a clear lane of ice out there and with the clear air the boat started well and left the pack early.  I rounded the first mark in 4th place and held on to that spot for my best race.

Almost all the boats used plates.  Ron kept winning with slippers so he wasn't about to change. Most everyone was watching him and stuck with plates.  I was back in the pack with slippers in the warm up regatta so I used minimum inserts on the plank which seemed to climb over the drifts ok and were fast downwind.  My old boat was faster than the skipper, but I was pleased with my finish tied 8/9th with Jorg.

It took 45 minutes to sort out scoring of the first race, then Deb and Mercedes were drafted as duplicate scorers to aid the two Russians who had their hands full.  Things then moved more smoothly. Their help was appreciated and rewarded with a box of chocolates.  The race was well organized and with all sailing in one fleet there wasn't any time to fiddle around between races.

You can find the scoring and lots of professional photography on the Four Lakes and several other linked web sites.  A lot of work went into boat transportation and housing arrangements, but it was worth it.  It was a great trip!

Hal Bowman
US 1277