Happy Go takes the Double –Winning Line Honours and IRC Overall in the 2024 Rolex China Sea Race

For the first time in 14 years, the Line Honours winner of the Rolex China Sea Race has ‘done the double’ and picked up the IRC Overall as well!

After a well fought ‘chase and overtake’ competition from the start till the finish, Happy Go finished the Race on 30 March at 05hr20m53s, a mere five minutes ahead of their rival all along the way down to Subic Bay, Standard Insurance Centennial V.

On her corrected time, of 3days 20hours 20mins 35 seconds, none of other IRC boats competing can beat her time in this 565 nautical mile race.

Nie Hua and crew lifted both the China Sea Trophy and Sunday Telegraph Trophy at the prizegiving ceremony held at the Subic Bay Yacht Club. Nie Hua was also presented with two Rolex timepieces. The last time a boat achieved the double win was in 2010 when Neil Pryde competed with his boat HiFi.

Nie Hua was ecstatic about taking both big prizes in their only their second entry into the Rolex China Sea Race, saying "We have made a lot of preparations ahead of the Race but getting Line Honours and the IRC Overall title is completely out of my expectations! I would like to give a huge applause to the crew working on board. I am absolutely thrilled and so thankful. We had a great team, although we had some language barriers, we operated well, so a big thank you to the team!"

Skipper Jono Rankine added his praises for the crew "Very proud of how the team came together, it's a relatively new team and everyone did a fantastic job and there were no egos on the boat and everyone was helping each other and doing a really good job. It was really satisfying to see."

Chinese Entry William Liu’s Seawolf claimed 2nd IRC Overall. Happy Go, Seawolf and Standard Insurance Centennial V also came 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively in IRC Racer 0.