Early on a sunny Saturday afternoon in January 2025, south Lantau’s Cheung Sha beach was quiet, with few people other than a couple of men sunbathing by the trees, a couple strolling along the sand. A yacht approached from the southeastern horizon, rode the breeze till it was within a couple of hundred metres from the shore, and the crew dropped an inflatable kayak into the water.
A man and a woman clad in shorts and t-shirts clambered aboard the kayak, and promptly began paddling towards the beach. Nearing the shore, the kayak was propelled forward on a wave and tossed into white surf, where the woman plunged forwards, still clutching her paddle; the man just managed to stand and steady the kayak. The two promptly recovered, pulled the kayak up onto the beach, jogged along the dry sand, and disappeared up a flight of steps through the trees.
Already, two men from another yacht were paddling ashore. They too lugged their kayak clear of the surf, strode briskly through the soft sand, and headed up the steps. More yachts came into view, bound for the same stretch of beach, even as others sailed back and forth offshore, waiting for their runners to return.
Organised by Aberdeen Boat Club, with 40th anniversary in 2025
The yachts’ crews and runners were taking part in one of Asia’s toughest, wackiest races – the annual Four Peaks Race, organised by the Aberdeen Boat Club. This involves sailing a route through southern Hong Kong waters, with halts for runners to climb up and down key hills on each of Lantau, Lamma and Hong Kong islands, plus Ma On Shan above Sai Kung. The course length is around 170 kilometres, and the peak ascents total some 2300 metres – roughly akin to dashing up and down a mountain four times the height of Victoria Peak, mostly along steep winding trails with rough-hewn rock steps.
Challenges include the vagaries of the weather, with yachts perhaps buffeted by powerful winds or almost becalmed in feeble breezes, along with tackling hill trails in darkness. While prizes are modest, the Four Peaks Race has a special allure, ensuring some teams return year after year. And though a substantial proportion of competitors are Britons – perhaps unsurprisingly to anyone familiar with the song “Mad Dogs and Englishmen”, there is an international flavour, such as a Dutch team that entered this year, along with Hong Kongers joining to likewise test their endurance and skills.
Now in its 40th year, the Four Peaks Race was the brainchild of Stephen Davies, a British ex-marine with a passion for hiking and sailing who arrived in Hong Kong during the late 1970s. Davies drew his inspiration from the UK’s Three Peaks Yacht Race, but decided the course should be completed within a weekend rather than a week. He was a member of Aberdeen Boat Club, and set about persuading the sailing committee the idea wasn’t barking mad and he wouldn’t be the only idiot who would be interested.
“I don’t think most of them ever agreed that sailing a few hours to a landing point near a mountain, running up and down it in any condition that prevailed – dark, light, foggy, wet, cold, hot, whatever – then sailing a few hours to repeat … and then repeat … and then repeat, was anything other than demented but they eventually agreed to back it, provided I did all the work and the costs to the club were minimal,” Davies recalls in an email.
Helicopter hired for first recce; routes tweaked over the years
The club agreed to provide HK$500 to subsidise expenses, and Davies set about typing and copying race rules and entry forms. He was pleased to attract 15 entries, including from highly competitive sailor Keith Jacobs, who hired a helicopter to check out the peaks and the course (“Keith was a very rich man,” notes Davies).
That first race began during light breezes, at 2pm on Saturday 27 January, with Davies among the starters, apprehensive that total calm could seriously screw up years of thinking and planning. The feeble breeze indeed proved a major reason for all but six boats retiring, though one team was thwarted by their runners taking a wrong way down Ma On Shan and arriving in Sha Tin rather than Sai Kung. Davies’ five-member team were euphoric as they crossed the finish line shortly before the midnight cut off – hours behind the overall winner, hotshot Jacobs of the helicopter recce.
Davies took part in a further 12 races, all with wife Elaine, who has amassed a tally of 20 races. At times there have been mishaps, especially in their second race, when the mast fell down after about 15 minutes.
“My fondest memory, given that I’m now a seriously old fart (I’m 80 in August), is of when Elaine and I did Mount Stenhouse together in 2019,” Davies notes. “Our 2 hr 04 min time was close to the average for the 17 competing teams which, given our combined age of 141, was very pleasing.”
There have been various changes to the Four Peaks Race over the years. Notably, while everyone on board a yacht had to run at least one peak in the first two years, this rule has been relaxed, and nowadays three people can be specialist sailors. Communications have greatly improved – from competitors essentially vanishing once out of view, to Gurkhas setting up army radios on peaks during the second race, then radio links set up as army training exercises, to mobile phones that are widespread today, along with the adoption of a GPS system that allows the race control room to monitor each yacht’s position in real time.
Routes can change, too, with occasional variations in the peaks selected, but mostly re-jigging the order the peaks must be climbed, which requires even veteran competitors to change their strategies.
Welcome to a breezy and bouncy start
This year, the routing meant heading first for Lantau Peak, then sailing east to take in Mount Stenhouse, Violet Hill, and Ma On Shan. The starting line was at Tai Tam Bay, southeast Hong Kong Island.
The mouth of the bay, that is, rather than the calm interior. “Welcome to a breezy and bouncy start to the Four Peaks Race,” said Aberdeen Boat Club’s marine services officer, Alex Johnston, using a microphone to contact competitors via radio, from atop the club’s committee boat anchored near the mouth of the bay, as the boat lurched up, down and sideways on two- to three-metre, white capped waves stirred by a fresh northeasterly.
“This would be normal for offshore racing in the UK,” Johnston remarked to a landlubber who had come to watch proceedings, and was clinging tightly to a guard rail. Holding the microphone close to minimise wind noise, he again radioed competitors, explaining the start had been delayed while all boats assembled.
Johnston and four other race officials counted yachts that were milling around over the choppy waters, and with all 12 entrants confirmed present, it was time for racing to begin. Johnston determined a line perpendicular to the main wind direction, and instructed race officer Gideon Mowser to raise a small flag, as the coxswain sounded an air horn. Yachts in the first division now had five minutes to approach the line.
Soon, Johnston was counting down: “Ten, nine … two, one.” The coxswain tapped a mini cannon, and there was a loud, sharp “Bang!”
“All clear, all clear!” Johnston radioed. The Four Peaks Race 2025 was underway.
Moments later, a yacht scythed through the water in front of the committee boat, bound for the more open sea to the south. Five more yachts followed in quick succession, riding the wind, and abruptly tilting to the right as they encountered stronger winds south of Cape D’Aguilar, at one point appearing to lean so far they must surely fill with water.
Johnston oversaw a second start, for division two boats, and another seven yachts joined the procession. The last of them was the only yacht with its mainsail down, powered only by the wind in its foresail, aka the jib. This was the white-hulled Mohan, from ngo Sailability.
One race, two courses, with handicap system
Though the first hill for runners was Lantau Peak, around 30 kilometres away to the west, all yachts headed towards the southeast, with the division one entries aiming to curve around Waglan Island, and division two entries set to pass nearer Beaufort Island.
The yachts’ routings had been decided the evening before by race officer Mowser, based on the weather, but it was only at the start that Johnston revealed these choices to the competitors. Division one yachts would travel some 170 kilometres, and the division two course was around 20 kilometres shorter.
“For the courses, I looked at the forecast, and tried to figure how many boats can get round in the time allowed to complete the race,” said Mowser. “If a course is too long, and the breeze dips, boats may give up and go home. If too short, the race could be all done and dusted in no time.”
Mowser explained that boats’ final results are calculated based on a handicap system, rather akin to golf competitions. The division one yachts each have an International Rating Certificate, which means the handicap is purely based on the yacht characteristics; while for division two the handicap mostly reflects a crew’s seamanship to date.
Even as the committee boat motored back to Aberdeen – where race officials would help volunteers working shifts in the control centre, word came in of a boat being forced to retire from the race: there was a serious issue with Wild Card, which was returning to a mooring off the west shore of Hong Kong Island.
Recce the weekend before, tales of prior mishaps
Owned and skippered by Glenn Smith, who is a veteran of the Four Peaks Race, competing twice in the 1980s and 11 times in more recent years, Wild Card had won the race the previous year, so was among this year’s favourites in the first division.
The Sunday prior to the race, seven of Wild Card’s nine-member team had gone out on the boat for a recce, along with practice dropping aboard and paddling the kayak without capsizing it, and checking potential places to pick up runners after they climbed Violet Hill. And if you’re wondering what these places might be, perhaps a team member could tell you, but they’d have to kill you – as teams like to keep their strategic planning secret, lest others learn how to shave minutes off their race times (okay, not really kill you, but team tips are not for sharing).
Recce participants included new runner John Vullierme. New runner for the team that is, not a neophyte when it comes to hill races: just the day before, Vullierme had run 100 kilometres, with a total elevation exceeding 5000 metres, in a race mainly covering the Maclehose Trail in Hong Kong’s New Territories.
Tang Po-yuen was another specialist runner on board, back for his third Four Peaks Race in a team led by Smith. He told of a misadventure during a previous race: capsizing on a kayak bound for Cheung Sha at around 1am, then spending 15 minutes in the water until he and his running partner were found and picked up by the yacht, before kayaking again, making it to the beach and running up Lantau Peak. “It was really cold, foggy on the hill, and I was soaking wet throughout,” said Po. Arriving at the summit, he and his partner met race volunteers who were monitoring runners, and were unlucky to be selected for a spot check of equipment such as torch, whistle and sleeping bag. “When I halted, I was shivering, and those four minutes or so seemed like an eternity,” Po recalls.
At least this mishap did not prevent the team continuing, and is among a host of relatively minor incidents that have peppered the race history, with some providing accidental comedy, like a runner who left a shoe on the boat and ran up Mount Stenhouse with one shoe off, one shoe on.
Other issues can leave teams with no options but to retire, such as a boat that got too close to the shore near Stanley, where the tide pushed it onto a shark net. “We had a hell of a job getting them off, and got the marine police involved,” recalls Johnston.
And this year, for Wild Card, the race-stopper was the top of the mainsail breaking soon after the start. “Never happened before,” Smith later noted. “Everyone was very disappointed of course.” Indeed, some team members uttered rather salty language, which does not bear repeating in a family newspaper.
Wide spread between teams on Lantau Peak, then onwards to Lamma and beyond
The other 11 boats reached Lantau without mishap, with the first of them arriving around three hours after the start; and two bringing up the rear roughly 1 hour 20 minutes later.
From Cheung Sha, the runners made for an old, disused road up to a pass at Pak Kung Au, then the rugged trail to Lantau Peak. While the horizontal distance is a modest 4.5 kilometres, this means ascending 934 metres from sea level, which to many people might make for a good outing for a day. Hikers might take a couple of hours just from Pak Kung Au to the summit; yet the fastest pair of runners in the race fairly rocketed up and down Lantau Peak, making it from and to a checkpoint by the beach in just 1 hour 27 minutes.
Not that everyone sprang between steps like a gazelle pursued by a cheetah. Several runners mostly walked at a brisk hiking pace, especially up the steep flights of stone steps that wind up through trees and past grassy slopes. This widened the spread between competitors, with Neo One the first boat to leave Cheung Sha at around 4pm, and Sailability’s MoHan last to depart, at 6pm, soon after sunset.
Even as MoHan moved off from Lantau, Neo One arrived at southwest Lamma, with two runners paddling ashore to climb Mount Stenhouse. Just 353 metres high, Mount Stenhouse is the lowest of the four peaks; yet this does not mean it makes for an easy ascent, even in daylight. The steep sides are overgrown, peppered with boulders, and there are few slender trails – leading to German “Extremsportier” Stefan Schlett, who took part in the 2000 Four Peaks Race, referring to the climb as “a bloody vulgarity”.
There are better trails up the next peak, Violet Hill, above Repulse Bay, which all teams also tackled in the dark.
Fry up breakfast on top of the mountain
Then, they sailed east towards Ma On Shan, where Tai Aiyada Kultakham, Diana Tsang Wan-yee and Bob Rogers awaited their runners.
During the first Four Peaks Race, runners simply dropped a piece of paper in a tin to show they had climbed a peak. But now, there are volunteers to confirm their arrival times, and perhaps verify they have the required safety gear. Aiyada and Tsang were newcomers to the Four Peaks Race, accompanying experienced volunteer Rogers.
“I’m one of the founder members of Aberdeen Boat Club, and have never been inclined to do the Four Peaks Race, but just help out,” says Rogers. Asked about his willingness to climb to one of Hong Kong’s highest peaks, then camp out overnight to await runners, he replies, “All the mountains are just awesome. I walk every weekend; it’s a pleasure being out in the hills. Ma On Shan is beautiful – you can have a fry up breakfast on top of the mountain, with that scenery around you.” The first-timers were likewise happy: “I’m really glad, I made it” messaged Aiyada, who had never been up Ma On Shan before.
The trio had hiked up in the late afternoon, set up camp , then slept – with information from the control room indicating the first runners could arrive about 2.15am. In fact, the first arrived at 1.55am, and the next at 4am, after which there was a steady trickle till after daybreak.
Even before Ma On Shan, Neo One was well ahead of the other boats. This was the sixth Four Peaks Race for owner-skipper Stefan Fillips, who explains via email that he enters, “Because it is the most exciting race of all races/regattas in HK. Challenging and exhausting but fun! … and very unique in the world. There is only one similar race, in the UK (3 Peaks Yacht Race).”
Sailability’s disabled sailors and runners include “blade runner”
While Neo One is among the faster yachts, with a well-honed crew expected to be among the race leaders, other teams may participate in the Four Peaks Race mainly to test themselves against the various challenges. They include the MoHan team from Sailability, a charity that provides disabled people with an opportunity to sail.
Sailability founder Kay Rawbone was among six able-bodied team members on board, together with six with disabilities. “We finished, though four boats retired,” she later says proudly. “Even as we sailed from Violet Hill to Ma On Shan at night – when it was really tough, windy, and starting to rain, nobody complained.”
Poon Tze-ming, who has muscular dystrophy and has difficulty walking, was at MoHan’s helm. Runners included Celvin Tsang, who has special educational needs, and Ma On Shan was his fourth peak of the race, making him the first disabled runner to ascend all four during a race. For Ma On Shan, Tsang and able-bodied Ho Chak-lam were joined by Camel Fung. Fung had lost his left leg to a traffic accident in 1979, and has since become a “blade runner”, tackling adventure races including the 1000-km 4 Deserts Ultramarathon Series.
As the Sailability runners reached the Ma On Shan checkpoint, the Neo One team were already back at the yacht’s base in Discovery Bay.
Unlike the breezy, bouncy start, the race had ended with something of an anti-climax. It was still dark as Neo One passed the Aberdeen Boat Club committee boat by Round Island, near Aberdeen. There were no cheers to be heard, no lights on board the yacht; to a waiting photographer, it passed the finish line “like a ghost ship”. The official time was 5.19:36am. Later, at 1.21pm, MoHan brought up the rear of the race. Both teams plan to again join the race next year; so too Glenn Smith of Wild Card, who predicts, “We’ll give Neo One a run for their money for the title 😊”.
Reflecting on this year’s Four Peaks Race, chairman John Currie believes it was encouraging to see the number of newcomers and skippers giving positive reviews, with the intention of re-entering in 2026. He notes the race is special – only made possible by Hong Kong’s combination of sea and hills, and even if skippers have also done several offshore races, “They always remember the Four Peaks.”
Written for the South China Morning Post magazine: Sailors and runners show their mettle in Hong Kong’s Four Peaks Race.
