St. James’s Place Sunset Series

WORDS: VIVIAN NGAN | IMAGES: PANDA MAN | VIVIAN NGAN

his is the second year running that the St James’s Place Sunset Series was been held in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. With travel restrictions keeping people in town, a record number of participants enthusiastically took the opportunity to join the action and get out on the water each Friday afternoon.

With racing held over the 12 weeks of summer – June through to August, the series was sailed under many challenging and varying conditions. Although a T1 brought some windy and rainy conditions on week 3, most Fridays saw gentle breeze and stunning sunsets culminating in all 12 weeks of racing.

RHKYC Sharks Optimist Coach Pato Jamardo was skipper of a Platu entry with his crew of very young Sharks Optimist sailors racing the series this year. As part of their race training Pato said “It is a great opportunity to gather all Optimist sailors on the same boat for yacht racing, so they could work as a team. In my opinion, if they can sail well in the Optimist, they can sail well in other boats.

2021 was another record breaking year for the St. James’s Place Sunset Series, averaging 65 boats per race, topping out at 68 on week 3, and a record breaking grand total of 82 boats across all classes being represented this year!

Sailing in the harbour can help these young sailors gain experience such as how to sail in tide. The Sunset Series is a race with many boats plus the Platu has a spinnaker, so they are exposed to different experiences.”

10 year-old Optimist sailor Helen Liu was the youngest sailor on board and did not miss a single races in the series, “I enjoyed seeing boats behind me and the whole experience was so fun.” These Optimist sailors were fearless when they were racing with sailors who were much older and much more experienced, Alexandra Yam added, “It is actually fun to race with your coach together with your teammates. With our age, a lot of sailors would like to hunt us as they saw a boat full of kids, some might break the rules in order to take over our boat, but they do not realise we have been racing for a long time, we know our racing rules so that we could protect our position.”

The last race also featured Stephanie Norton, who finished her quarantine after representing Hong Kong as the first ever single-handed class at the Tokyo Olympics in the Laser Radial Class. This time around Stephanie was helming on Mick McCool’s Etchells Fiddler’s Green.

Over the 12 week series, each week saw different winners up to collect a range of sponsor supported prizes. Tam Nguyen’s Dragon Zephyr, Ringo Tam’s Etchells Easy Tiger, Carlyon Knight-Evans’ Flying 15 Kerfuffle, Gideon Mowser’s Sky’s The Limit, John Lok / Frank Chu’s Magic 25 Fly By Wire, C M Cheng’s Dragon Phyloong II, Herman Wong’s Impala Paddy B, Wilfred Ma’s Impala Xanadu, Patrick Kwan / Francis Cheung’s Impala Boss Hogg, Eric Yeung / Tony Chan’s Impala Caviar, Howard Williams’s Flying 15 Tchaiffosky and Henry Wong’s J/80 Footloose each taking a bullet.

The overall podium spots of St. James’s Place Sunset Series 2021 were all won by Etchells; Reprobate raced by Backe / Boote / Collins / Curthoys / Houghton, won the overall 1st place with their consistent performance after 4 discards, Nick Burns’ Gunga Din were close on their heels with only 4 points behind, Sunset by Mark F skippered by Isamu Sakai / Bo Lee took 3rd place overall. We would like to extend a huge thank you to our sponsors for their continued support, as it is with their support that the Sunset Series is one of the most popular events of the season. With the highest average attendance this season ever, we cannot go without saying thank you to our title sponsor St. James’s Place Wealth Management, who were joined by returning Supporting sponsor Simpson Marine and partners Peroni, Pharmabelle and Swims. We would also like to thank new partners Chateau Highball and Apollo 11, who joined all our returning sponsors to provide a plethora of goodies for the sailors across the series.

Racing would not be possible without our Race Officer team of Barry Truhol, Ian Fleming and Ken Wong and their race management team of volunteers including Andy Barclay, Betty Ho, Caine Boesenberg, Cherise Leung, Clarence Che, Daisy Zhu , Damien Massingham, Ellen Wong, Heng Tam, James Coghill, Joey Chan, Joyce Chan, Ken Ting, Liz Wai, Lucy Sutro, Marcus Bischoff , Mike Griffiths, Paul Yeung, Ryan Wong, Sean Taylor, Sharly Choi, Stephen Chun, Stephen Ng, Sylvia Tung, Tina Atkinson, Vani Wong, Victor Pang, Victor Yung, Vivian Yu, Wilfred Lee, William But and Yvonne Sin.

St James’s Place Sunset Series 2021 – Result

SAIL NO BOAT NAME OWNER/ SKIPPER

CLASS PTS POS

1235 Reprobate Backe/Boote/Collins/Curthoys/Houghton Etchells 59 1 1243 Gunga Din Nick Burns Etchells 63 2 1193 Sunset By Mark F Isamu Sakai / Bo Lee Etchells 83 3 4038 Full Power Sam Chan F15 89 4 27 Ironman Lam Sean Sportsboat 91 5 3981 Tchaiffosky Howard Williams F15 92 6 9 Phoenix Victor Kuk / David Ho Sportsboat 104 7 731 Rainbow Chaser Sunny Chai / K K Lee Impala 113 8 3046 Sky’s The Limit Gideon Mowser Sportsboat 114.5 9 1066 Boss Hogg Patrick Kwan / Francis Cheung Impala 116 10