Yacht Style – July 2019

Tommy is again in shock, his head flicking back, eyes wide open.

“I didn’t know that!”

“A lot of people came up to me for autographs,” Susie continues.

“What for? I didn’t understand what they wanted.”

BACK IN HONG KONG

In the early 1970s, Sai-lo became a foreman at the Royal Hong

Kong Yacht Club before setting up his own family-named repair

service operation onsite in 1977 with Susie, who has helped manage

the operation for over four decades, although she has recently handed

most responsibility to Tommy’s second-eldest brother.

In 1983, Sai-lo left the new family business to join the new Club

Marina Cove, which Henderson Land had developed from a fishing

farm into a marina and residences. In fact, Sai-lo was recruited by

Grantham Sharkey, Tommy’s godfather and the former marina manager

of Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, who was hired by Marina Cove.

When Tommy was young, the family spent time living on a junk

in the Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter by Royal Hong Kong Yacht

Club and he has fond memories of this period of his life (featured

in COLUMN, Issue 46), although there were hardships, such as

showering with no hot water.

As a schoolboy, Tommy joined his father at Marina Cove each

Sunday, helping yacht owners with their belongings, cleaning yachts

and doing other odd jobs.

“I needed to make some pocket money,” says Tommy, who has

Tommy with Kara Yeung, Executive Director of HKCYIA, at the signing ceremony of the MOU for Hong Kong’s new Superyacht Management Services Centre

Tommy’s mother, Susie Lei (on left), with Prime Minister Edward Heath at the 1971 London Boat Show; Tommy (middle) with his brothers on the family boat

in Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter; Tommy in the background at June’s Family Days weekend at Marina Cove, co-organised by Ferretti Group and Voyager

“The wife was steering, but she was hungry, so she asked me to
take over at the wheel while she went to get some food. When she
got down to the galley, she found the whole place was flooded and
started crying out. A hole in the pump was leaking and flooded the
whole deck. We stopped the boat, found out where the leak was, then
repaired it.”
As Sai-lo continued to work as crew on boats on his return to
Hong Kong, Susie continued her sampan-based work, which included
managing her side party brigade, cleaning the sides of Royal Navy
ships at HMS Tamar, chipping off rust and repainting them.
“They didn’t pay me,” she says. “They’d give us old rope, wires,
anything we could either use or sell.”
Tommy knows all about his mother’s part in the 1971 London
International Boat Show at Earl’s Court when ‘The boats and water-
people of Hong Kong’ was a theme and she was one of two ladies,
along with Annie Ho, selected to represent the then-colony.
“They wanted to promote Hong Kong and they sent two sampans to
London for the show. I had been working with the Royal Navy ships for
a long time, since I was very young, and they chose two of us. Rowing
a sampan is quite a skill because there’s only one paddle to power and
steer,” Susie says.
“I flew there on December 31, 1970, but arrived on New Year’s
Day in 1971. It was the coldest place I’d been. Then, for the opening
ceremony, I rowed the sampan for the British Prime Minister, [Edward]
Heath.”

PROFILE Tommy Ho, Voyager Risk Solutions