One Global Tomes Cup

WORDS: VIVIAN NGAN | IMAGES: GUY NOWELL | VIVIAN NGAN

85 boats were greeted by a moderate easterly breeze in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour as they competed in the One Global Tomes Cup on 24 April, the final constituent event of the four-race Top Dog Trophy Series 2020-2021. This much sought-after title is presented to the boat with the best-combined results from a series of races over the sailing season.

With 8kts of easterly breeze, Race Officer Gareth Williams elected to start in Hung Hom, setting a course that took the fleet to round 2.5 laps between Hung Hom and Tai Koo Shing before a reaching leg to Kowloon Bay and Kai Tak to the finish.

The Tomes Cup is a pursuit race with the slowest boats starting first and progressing through a series of staggered start times until the fastest boat starts last. The Pandora fleet started at 14:00hrs with the fastest boat, TP52 Alpha+, starting 76 minutes behind in hot pursuit of the rest of the fleet.

race, before filling in again to get all the racers home. Pandora Windfall held her lead to the second windward leg at Tai Koo Shing before being passed by Dragon Zephyr. Although starting last, Alpha+ slowly picked off the slower boats one by one, eventually crossing the finish line at 16:38:40hrs to take the win. Etchells Noddy crossed the line 1 minute 10 seconds later, taking second place and Dragon Zephyr kept up her strong performance to hold onto third place.

With the completion of the One Global Tomes Cup, Tam Nguyen maintained his hold on first place for the Top Dog Trophy Series 20202021, with an impressive 12 points lead over Frank Van Kempen on Etchells King of the Pin, who took second place and Jamie McWilliam’s Etchells Noddy climbed into third place overall after a successful second place win at the One Global Tomes Cup.

Zephyr is also the first Dragon to win the Top Dog Trophy. In very consistent racing, Zephyr managed to make their mark by covering each of the possible podium positions throughout the series, with a second place in both One Global Lipton Trophy (14 November) and Around the Island Race (8 November), a bullet in One Global HKRNVR Memorial Vase (28

February) and finally a third in One Global Tomes Cup (24 April). Skipper Tam Nguyen was thrilled about their overall win. “That was an exciting series. It was the first time we did the Top Dog Series in its entirety and it was great to be able to really race against other classes in real time rather than having to do a post-race handicap calculation – that gave us some tactical options and thrills on the water. I was amazed to see how the ratings did work well with Alpha+ TP 52 coming a minute or so ahead of us in both ATIR and Tomes Cup and all the tight pursuit races with Frank van Kampen’s Etchells, Jamie McWilliam’s Etchells and Sam Chan’s Flying Fifteen. The strategy was not too much different from our standard fleet racing except we had to take into account significant dirty wind from traffic (both commercial and large competitors) which had an impact on our options. Our team was the same across all the races with Michi Valenti and Wayne Curry and that consistency helped a lot. The team was so motivated that Wayne even decided to present us with a new mainsail for the One Global Tomes Cup! He is setting a precedent for all crew out there!”

One Global Tomes Cup 2021 – Saturday 24 April 2021

NAME OF BOAT SAIL NUMBER CLASS SKIPPER POSITION

Alpha+ Noddy 46 Big Boat Shawn Kang

1 1393 Etchells Jamie McWilliam 2 Zephyr 55 Dragon Tam Nguyen 3 King Of The Pin 1364 Etchells Frank Van Kempen 4 Racer X 1406 Etchells Mark Thornburrow 5 Rampage88 2548 Big Boat Denis Ma 6 Impala 1 9546 Impala Mike Burrell 7 Dragonfly 59 Dragon Bram Van Olphen 8 Gunga Din 1243 Etchells Nick Burns 9 Les Freaks Sont Chic 1428 Etchells Marco Pocci 10

Top 10 Top Dog Trophy Series 2020-2021

NAME OF BOAT SAIL NUMBER CLASS SKIPPER

POSITION

Zephyr 55 Dragon Tam Nguyen 1 King Of The Pin 1364 Etchells Frank Van Kempen 2 Noddy 1393 Etchells The Jamies 3 Gunga Din 1243 Etchells Nick Burns 4 Impala 1 9546 Impala Mike Burrell 5 Ambush 2388 Big Boat Jochim Isler / Andrew Taylor 6 Tchaikoffsky 3981 Flying Fifteen Howard Williams 7 Uffa Fox Ache 4015 Flying Fifteen Nick Atkinson 8 Rainbow Chaser 731 Impala Sunny Chai / K K Lee 9 Taxi 1047 Impala Dennis Chien 10

The club would like to thank the fabulous volunteers who ran the racing on the day, Race Officer Gareth Williams and his team of ever skillful assistants: Adrienne Walder, Anthony Root, Di Williams, Penelope Batley, Lindsay Lyons, Niclas Rydin, Phillip Walker, Ryan Peart, Miquel Ballester, Ricky Yu and Victor Tsien. The RHKYC would like to extend a huge thank you to One Global Property Services, title sponsor of the Tomes Cup, and Peroni, Absolute, Beefeater Gin & Havana Club, partners of the Tomes and Nation’s Cup. It has certainly been a unique time to be a sponsor, and we really appreciate their support despite ongoing restrictions. Their continued support has enabled our events to grow and become more exceptional each year and we can’t wait to be able to celebrate each race like we used to soon.