Tom and Dottie Hill’s 75ft Maxi Titan 12 has won the Yachting World Trophy at Rolex Antigua Sailing Week for the second year in succession.

This trophy presented by Yachting World for the first time last year for the fastest elapsed time around the island of Antigua is an event that is building a lot of kudos within Antigua Sailing Week’s race schedule. Although the race format was changed slightly this year see previous news story here incorporating two legs, instead of one non-stop sprint, the Big Boat Racing class enjoyed some extremely taxing racing particularly the second leg on Tuesday when the wind built to 20 knots plus.

Titan, the ultra-light, narrow flyer seemed to be uncatchable upwind but on ‘Big Tuesday’ it was the Open 60 Pindar designed for blasting offwind that really gave her a run for her money down the west coast of the island. Hill commented: “Yes, we were a little worried that we’d lost the trophy at this point because Pindar was just flying, they were way ahead of us.

“That boat is super-fast and their start was unbelievable, they were on the start line to the second going full blast. But on the beat we just chewed them up and in 17-18kts we were doing 10.3kts going to weather and finally caught them. We have to give them something like six or eight minutes and I think we beat them by about a couple of minutes.”

With a successful Rolex Antigua Sailing Week under their belt Team Titan 12 will be heading for their next big regatta – Newport Bermuda Race. The entry list for that event is building and with the likes of Andrew Pindar’s Open 60 already signed up the crew of Titan are going to have a tough race on their hands particularly if the wind goes ahead.

Hill concluded: “If Pindar does the race she will be tough one to beat. On a reach they are probably a little faster than us and we’re giving them time. It’s a good race for that boat if the conditions are right, if it goes a little forward then they’ve got a big battle.”