Teams of three boats per school will compete in two divisions over two days of racing in front of RHKYC’s Middle Island sailing centre, completing around 180 races in the process.

The discipline is team racing, which has been described as “lots of short highly competitive races where boat handling skills matter more than your bank balance”. Teams consist of three boats with two sailors in each boat. Competing sailors have to think not only about where they lie in a race, but also where their team mates are positioned, as the result includes all three scores (i.e. 2,3,4 beats 1,5,6) and coming first may not be the best result for the team.

All the schools in a division will race against each other in a Round Robin format then, if the schedule allows, the top teams will sail off against each other to decide the winner.

Hong Kong Sea School is the school to beat, having won both Division A (Feva) and Division B (Pico) in 2014, however South Island School, West Island School and French International School have all lifted trophies in previous years and cannot be discounted.

Race Officer Andrew Moore is joined by 25 volunteers, who will manage everything from mark laying, race management and on the water umpiring to commentary and results input for what must surely be the highlight of the Schools’ sailing year.