HONG KONG—After horrendous weather for sports on Saturday, Sunday Nov 27 turned out to be a completely different day with calm, dry conditions for the Around the Hong Kong Island Race 2016.
More than 250 boats took part in the race with a sequence of 20 starts lasting from 8:30am until 10am; slower boats setting first and the big boats and fast crafts setting off last. Although not a pure pursuit race, the start sequence takes into account the Around the Island Index (ATI) and final places are calculated by multiplying the index rating by the elapsed time. Only 54 of the 250 plus boats finished within the time limit.
Frank Pong’s 72ft racer “Jelik” overhauled the fleet to take line honours in an elapsed time of 3:52:22, finishing just after 1:30pm but it was teenager Calum Gregor helming a 29er together with crew Russell Aylsworth that won the race on corrected time. This is his 3rd consecutive win in the annual event. Calum was the overall winner of the last two Around the Island Races, helming a 420 in 2014 and a 29er in 2015.
Stalwart Sportsboat skippers Dion Houghton in “R2B2” and Steve Bourne in “Merlin” took the next two places with Houghton finishing just a minute behind Gregor on corrected time. Jon Crawford in another 29er finished 4th and Frank van Kempen took 5th place in Etchells “King of the Pin”. Leading Big Boats fared well in this year’s race with “Signal 8”, “Ambush”, “Zannekin” and “Jelik” taking the next 4 places.
Prizegiving was held on Monday Nov 28 evening at RHKYC Kellett Island.
Full results: http://www.rhkyc.org.hk/AroundtheIslandRace.aspx
