Hong Kong-Macau windsurfer hopes more take up water sports
Australian sailor Nick Moloney has set the record for the route across the Pearl River estuary, and he is challenging the sailing fraternity in Hong Kong to up their game
At the age of eight, Australian sailor Nick Moloney used to help the owner of a small sail shop on the Barwon River in Victoria state pack away the sails every day in exchange for time in a boat.
Moloney grew up about 500 metres from the waters of the Bass Strait and it would be from the Barwon River that, as a grown-up, he would set off to windsurf from the Australian mainland to Tasmania. Twenty-two hours and 230 kilometres later he had set a record for the crossing; he is still the only person to have done it unassisted.
Moloney set off from the southeast corner of Lamma Island on a windsurfing board and landed five hours later at a waypoint off Macau’s southeast coast, launching the St Regis Macao Cup and setting the time to beat in the process. Given his former exploits, a five-hour jaunt to Macau seems almost leisurely.
Sailing downwind presents specific challenges. “Your body is contorted all the time and your legs are continually acting as shock absorbers. I knew about two and a half hours in I was in trouble with the physical aspect of it,” he says.
A sailor at heart, Moloney decided to windsurf to Macau partly to encourage others to take his record on and to get involved with the sport. “The basics of windsurfing are the basics of sailing,” he says. “Anyone can get involved, it’s cheap in comparison to sailing, you don’t need a yacht club membership and there is a great fraternity in Hong Kong, particularly in Stanley and Sai Kung.”
The problem, Moloney says, is that while windsurfing can act as a great stepping stone to sailing, there doesn’t seem to be a pathway in Hong Kong yet. There are of course other reasons that people don’t get involved, among them the perception that sailing is an elitist sport. “There are some aspects of sailing that warrant that tag,” Moloney says, “things like guards on gates at the yacht club and Ferraris in the car park, and of course yachts are expensive and costly to maintain.”
There is no question he will attempt to break his own record again. “I’ll give it a little bit of time, but if no one steps up then I’ll go again. If I can get a suitable hydrofoiling platform, I think I can do it in an hour and a half to two hours.”
Watch this space.