Dragon Festival Race Hong Kong to Macau 2008
Written by Wayne Robinson
“Depth gauge now reading 2.5 feet Jon, sure you’re in the middle of the Channel” I asked with growing apprehension. Jon on the helm replied “as best as I can tell, but where did Macau go?”
We were in my 35’ Cheoy Lee yacht ‘SAWADEE’ motoring almost totally blind into a severe thunder storm entering the very narrow and busy Macau Channel. It was almost 19:00 and with darkness falling coupled with the heavy downpour the visibility closed to almost zero. Fortunately just before the viz dropped we were able to plot our exact position and compass heading as well as ensure we were in the correct channel and not the channel for the jet foils a few hundred yards to our starboard.
Jon Zinke and I had been in a very similar situation together almost 10 years before AND in the same boat. At that time we were returning to Hong Kong from a China Sea - Philippines race when 25 miles south of Hong Kong we were hit by a mother of a thunderstorm and had no choice but to ‘hove to’ for a long agonizing 50 minutes looking for other shipping and expecting to get hit by either a ship steaming out of the gloom or by one of the huge lightening bolts that were hitting the water all around the boat. As on this occasion Jon took the helm whilst I jumped between the navigation table and organized the crew.
In our present situation we’d just passed north of the Macau Airport runway so just over a mile from the first Macau Bridge but even though it would be well illuminated, it was totally invisible to us now. However that wasn’t our only concern, we were heading into a fast ebbing spring tide that, according to the tide tables, would be lowest at 19:05 and in June, and spring tides are at their lowest ever. And if that wasn’t bad enough, because the Macau channel is constantly silting up it requires continuous dredging so it was a fair guess that dredgers could be working in the middle of the channel.
Talk about a rock & a hard place!
We pressed on toward Macau - almost blind in the cascading rain, as the rest of our crew were keeping lookout Jon & I both stared at the depth gauge willing the reading upward. I dare not think of the consequences if we went aground now.
I went below to check our course on the GPS chart plotter, unbelievably the Macau chart changes page at the very point were - so that’s like trying to view a section of a road map that lies on the middle or edge of a page, between the seems you just don’t get the full detail ! But in any case you’d have to be mad to relay on a superimposed GPS plot on an electronic chart in such a confined waterway as often the satellite position given on the chart is not truly accurate and can be hundreds of meters off.
SAWADEE doesn’t have radar either, anyway it would be virtually useless in this kind of weather, and that knowledge beggars the obvious question; what’s the other traffic doing without their’s? Big cat ferries, river cargo ships and container barges also ply this narrow waterway, all heading for the one narrow gap between the bridge supports. Hope they slow down a bit.
We had no choice but to press on, fortunately I also had my handheld GPS in the cockpit as on previous trips I had sailed up to and recorded accurate plots for all navigation buoys and features with it. Recalling these plots now I was able to provide range and direction to each navigation mark, giving course and distance to Jon on the helm. The visibility was now down to less than a hundred feet so it was with great relief when the first top light appeared out of the murk in front of us confirming we were on course, we progressed steadily up the channel in this manner, buoy by buoy. We just hoped there wasn’t another vessel doing the same coming the other way.
We were one of the 17 yachts entered in the Cruiser Owner Associations Dragon Festival Hong Kong to Macau race, 36 miles across the Pearl River Estuary. Having problems in reaching the start due to a fouled propeller we were now the last boat to arrive in Macau.
The day did not get off to a great start; the event had had to be delayed and was almost cancelled due to an unusually heavy thunderstorm. Early that morning the Hong Kong Observatory had issued a Red, then Black rain storm warnings. And because of massive flooding and road closures crews of the 17 yachts registered to take part were finding great difficulty in getting to their boats, when they did, most didn’t want to venture out to sea with a 15 – 20m lightening rod sticking skyward above their heads! A few other yachts had no choice but to stick it out at sea as they had left their home berths in Hebe Haven & Discovery Bay well before the storm hit.
As the event organizers, I, Jon, Myrna, had to endure an agonizing 2 hours. Boat Skippers constantly ringing with questions on what was happening regarding the race. Were we going ahead or cancelling, should they hang on set off or go home? I can totally understand, nobody wants to put their boats and crew at risk with all that lightening around, least of all me but nobody can really predict what the weather will be like in an hour or so. So we announced an initial half an hour delay for the start and told them we would consider options in half an hour. That slowed the number of phone calls for a bit while we considered that we just might have to cancel the race.
Eventually, by around 9:30, the skies to the south began to clear so the rest of the boats began to set out for the start area though some leaving Causeway Bay had to turn back as they couldn’t see sufficiently to make safe passage through the harbour.
In the clearing weather the Race Officer, John Berry called each boat on VHF to ascertain their ETA at the start area off S/E Lamma, allowing time for all to arrive before announcing the race start time. John possesses tremendous sailing experience and with true professionalism and skill managed to get all boats started with less than an hour delay from the original start time.
John, unlike me that morning never doubted the weather would clear sufficiently to allow the race to go ahead, but then again he didn’t have a 14m lightening rod sticking out of his boat either! Indeed John had set off in the start boat at 8:30 in the thick of the weather so as to be in position to be able to start the race when that time came. I think all skippers on the race owe John a beer or two for making that call and making the event happen.
Unfortunately for us on SAWADEE on our way motor-sailing to the start line we developed a problem, whilst crossing the Lamma Channel through the mass of dentritus washed off the land by the rain we picked up something on our prop thus requiring dropping all sails whilst one of the crew went over the side and clear it.
With prop now clear and gallant crew back on board we re-hoisted sail but we were now last boat to cross the start line. All we could do was chase the others across the Pearl River Estuary to Macau. However SAWADEE is no racer, she was built for crossing oceans and offshore cruising so we knew we had little chance of catching up so we just settled down to enjoy the trip on our own.
The sail over was tremendous with 20+ kt S/W winds meant SAWADEE was in her element, well heeled over with 3 full sails billowing ‘in the grove’ she charged along at a steady 7 - 8kts.
Our course to Macau takes the yachts on a southerly route through Wanshan Qundau, (Ten Thousand Hills Islands). During the 16th to 19th Centuries this 104-island archipelago – then included Hong Hong, was known as the Ladrones. (No, not the Punk Band! The name comes from Spanish / Portuguese Islas de los Ladrones meaning "Islands of Thieves"). On a clear day these are the Islands you see stretching to the south and the south west of Hong Kong.
These islands in the Pearl river estuary was the lair of some of China’s most famous Kwangtung pirates; Queen of the Canton Pirates, Cheng Yi Sao (1785 -1844) took over her first husband Zheng Yi’s pirating operations commanded as many as 1,500 pirate Junks and 80,000 fighting men. In she 1810 was granted amnesty, retired from piracy and married her adoptive son Cheung Po-Tsai. Both characters featured in the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
And as recently as the beginning of the last century a gang of pirates under the leadership of Leung Iu Chan was operating from Coloane. There is (or was) a victory monument on Coloane commemorating the final demise of this band by joint Portuguese and Chinese naval forces. Its inscription in Portuguese reads: COMBATES De COLOANE 12 e 13 JUNE De 1910.
During the 1920’s-30’s another famous Pirate Queen was Lai Choi-San who, it is said once held Macau’s Government to ransom although other accounts suggest Macau actually sanctioned Lai Choi San’s pirate fleet to protect its waters. Her fate is unknown.
Another piece of Chinese history concerning these waters records that, when the Sung Dynasty was overturned by the invasion of the Mongols under Kublai Khan, the last Emperor of the Sung Dynasty, then a young child, was driven with the Imperial Court to the South of China and finally compelled to take refuge on board ship, accompanied by a small fleet.
Coasting along from Foochow, past Amoy and Swatow, the young Emperor passed through the Ly-ee-moon into the waters of Hong Kong. After a short stay on the Kowloon Peninsula, the Imperial fleet sailed westwards until he reached Ngai Shan, at the mouth of the West River (South-west of Macao). But meanwhile the Mongols had taken possession of Canton and hastily organized a fleet with which they hemmed in the Imperial flotilla on all sides. The Prime Minister (Luk Sau-fu), seeing all was lost, took the youthful Emperor on his back, jumped into the sea (A. D. 1279) and perished together with him and the Sung Dynasty.
As SAWADEE passed through these islands the wind varied in speed and direction a little requiring us to reef the sails for a while then later shaking out the reefs as the wind decreased slightly to maintain boat speed. It was a great sail, skies were clear to the south although the ominous presence of the dark cloud punctuated by frequent lightening bolts that filled the northern sky from Zhuhi to Shenzhen was worrying.
By late afternoon we sailed between the last two islands, Dalu Dao and Datou Zhou before heading northward toward Macao. I went up to the foredeck to free off the last reef in the dying wind when suddenly we were joined by about 10 – 15 pink Dolphin, porpoising in front and on each side of our boat. It was a magnificent sight.
As I watched our Dolphin escort in that late afternoon sun from my position at the mast between SAWADEE’s two headsails and mainsail, I reflected on the history of these islands and I felt that I would not want to be anywhere else; on the deck of my own boat surrounded by Dolphin sailing through waters that were once hunting grounds of the fierce Kwangtung pirates. This was one of the true magic moments of sailing, one for the memory bank, hence this written account.
With only 5 miles to go the wind began to die as we approached Macau Buoy 1, our finish line and Macau entrance channel buoy. As the last of the Dolphins left us we turned on the iron wind (the engine) in order to get into Macau before dark. But no sooner had we passed Buoy 1 and dropped and furled all sail, the sky went completely black as the thunderstorm seemingly came out to great us. Then the heavens opened!
It was incredible to see the amount of water falling; it hurt the eyes when you tried to look into it. We quickly plotted our position, took compass bearings and checked the location of all other shipping around us. Then we began our nightmare trip into the narrow and shallow Macau channel as the visibility closed in.
It took about 30 minutes to reach the bridge but seemed much longer. When we finally got to it the water coming down from the open drains on the road bridge above was incredible, water was flowing off it like a curtain wall ala the Niagara Falls. The scene was spectacular. But just as suddenly as it had begun as we passed through the bridge the skies cleared, it was as if we’d passed through a curtain of rite and before us in the clearing skies lay Macau lit up like a megalithic Christmas tree laid out before us. After what we’d just been through we felt we’d reached Shangri-La.
We cracked open a bottle of rum, and toasted each other with Dark & Stormy’s which seemed appropreate. Soon we would be tying up in the Clube de Nautica Yacht Club then dinner ashore in any one of the great Portuguese restaurants where we would meet with other sailors and recount tales of ”there I was I thought I was going to die”
Tomorrow would be a lay day and the prize-giving party in the Macau Wine Museum where sailors will place orders for fine Portuguese wines to take back with them on the race back on Monday. Hope the weather clears up!