One Global Lipton Trophy 2022 at Victoria Harbour
by RHKYC Media 28 Nov 2022 04:48 PST
26 November 2022
The second constituent event of the Top Dog Trophy Series 2022-2023, the One Global Lipton Trophy, took place on Saturday 26 November with an average of 5kts of easterly wind being bestowed upon Victoria Harbour.
The regular Race Officer team of Gareth and Di Williams opted for a Hung Hom start and elected to set the fleet to sail 2.5 loops between Hung Hom and Tai Koo Shing. Pursuit races work on each boat or class of boats being given a different start time based on their handicap, which in a perfect race would result in all boats finishing at around the same target time of 1630hrs.
Luckily the rain stopped before racing got under way. The Pandoras were the first to start at 1400hrs and the last boat to start was TP52 Phoenix at 1514hrs. A total of 62 boats started the race at staggered start times set according to their RHKATI ratings.
As the day progressed, the wind built up to an occasional 9kts with blue sky briefly showing up at the end of the day. RO Gareth Williams shortened the course at Tai Koo Shing; exceptionally close to the target finish time.
Congratulations to Pandora Windfall who held off the faster classes until the final gun, crossing the finishing line at 16h30m52s with their sailors jumping up and down with joy. Impala 1 crossed in 2nd place just 37 seconds behind and Impala Gnu took 3rd place. It was a great day for the Pandora and Impala fleets with boats from these two classes taking up the top ten places of the day.
The One Global Lipton Trophy is the second of four events that make up the Top Dog Trophy Series 2022-2023. The first event was last weekend's Sun Hung Kai & Co. Around the Island Race and the next two pursuit races are the One Global HKRNVR Memorial Vase (7 January 2023) and the One Global Tomes Cup (29 April 2023).