60 seconds with Richard Au

1. How old were you when you first stepped on a boat? Around 16 or 17 – a friend of mine took me out in his Swanson Dart, a sweet sailing 22’ keel boat.

2. If money (and sailing ability) were no limit, what boat would you buy? A new Laser would be nice. A cruising yacht would also be nice but I don’t have time for that, my little speedboat is already not being used enough.

3. What is your ultimate sailing goal? Sailing faster! I’m a beginner in dinghies so tacking more efficiently and getting better at sailing by the lee.

4. Tell us the story behind the name of your Laser? The friends of the previous owner of my boat thought he was a bit stuck up, a toff, so as a joke he named his first Laser “Toff".  This boat was his second Laser so it was called “Toftu". Being vegetarian I thought “Tofu" was a good name so I removed the t.

5. If you could add any ingredient to DBSC's world’s best toasties – what would it be? More mushrooms like portobello or porcini or shiitake.

6. What are your second/third favourite hobbies (assuming sailing is #1)? I’ve got too many hobbies so I rotate them. The constants though are reading fiction and non-fiction, music and photography. To facilitate music reproduction I’ve been into restoring and tweaking high fidelity equipment since I was a kid. It’s surprisingly difficult to make both Mahler symphonies and the Rolling Stones sound good on the same system. So when tuning I err towards Mahler, Davis and Coltrane. I don’t shoot so much these days but when I do I concentrate on light and composition which I also look for and really appreciate in other people’s photographs.

7. Describe what you do for work in less than five words? Develop apps on Apple iOS, Swift, Xcode.

8. What is the first international destination you will travel to (once we're allowed) and why? Not sure because it's unlikely all destinations will be open at the same time but Hong Kong and Taiwan would be nice.

9. What is your favourite TV show, movie, and/or book? I don’t have favourites, there’s too many of them. Of the recent releases I liked the 2018-19 mini-series Das Boot and movie Interstellar. War and Peace might be the greatest work of fiction. I’m not kidding, I’ve read it twice and highly recommend it. For non-fiction, I’ve just finished (DBSC member) Finn Kirk’s dad’s book “The Genes that Make Us”, an excellent read.

10. Tell us something interesting about yourself that members of the club don’t know? I like to build and/or fix things. Recent projects include restoring a ~120 year old German violin, refitting and rewiring an old Cruise Craft runabout with Johnson 70hp outboard, rebuilding two sets of QUAD amplifiers and FM tuners for Morgan and myself. In my 20s I liked working on classic sports cars.

I’m with my brother Derek (left) and friend David in his then new Northshore 38 (circa 1986)