On Tuesday, 2nd June, Tork Buckley, the editor of the Yacht Report landed in Singapore on SQ0216 at 0625 and was brought to his Marina View room, specially prepared for him by ONE°15 Marina Club.
He started off the first of his full day of appointments with Peter Mison, sales manager of Simpson Marine. They discussed an hour about the recent trend of yacht sales and the yachting scene in Singapore. Following that, ONE°15 Marina Club served Tork a welcome luncheon where he had the opportunity to meet with David Brightling, General Manager of ONE°15 Marina Club, Guillaume Chaillot, Senior Marina Manager of ONE°15 Marina Club and Vivien Teo, Director of Marketing & Communications, ONE°15 Marina Club.
It was a splendidly entertaining lunch and it was too soon before Tork found that he had to leave for his next appointment. He headed down to Orchard Towers to see Julian Chang and James Han, Executive Director and Senior Marketing Executive of Raffles Yacht Limited respectively and was briefed on their latest new build. The next stop was to the Republic of Singapore Yacht Club (RSYC). Commodore Balakrishnan welcomed Tork and arranged for him to have a tour of the Club’s premises. As the early signs of dusk approached, they sat down at RSYC’s outdoor bar for a few rounds of beer and satay, enjoying the colors of sunset fill the evening sky against the West Coast waterscape of yachts, boats and ships.
Night fell and soon, Tork was on his way back to ONE°15 Marina Club. His last appointment for the day was with Scott Walker, Director of Asia Pacific Superyachts and the Captain of “Yanneke Too” who dropped by ONE°15 to say ‘hi’ and to chat briefly with the editor of the Yacht Report. By 8.45pm, Tork was done for the night.
It had been a long but fruitful day for Tork Buckley, and how else better to end the day than to enjoy a good rest and quality sleep in his Marina View room. June 3rd, Wednesday was going to be another day of meeting more industry people.
The morning of Wednesday, June 3rd started off well. Tork had requested to see Marina @ Keppel Bay before his arrival in Singapore. It was to his delight then that Francis Olsen, Chief Marina Officer of Marina @ Keppel Bay specially dropped by One15 Marina to fetch Tork over for coffee and a tour of Keppel Bay Marina’s premises. Tork duly starting taking photos as he sat in the buggy trailing down the pontoon of the Marina. Before he left, Francis presented him with some brochures and souvenirs before sending him off to his next and final destination, Raffles Marina Club.
The editor arrived in time for a short tour of the Marina, a glimpse at superyacht “Lady D”, and a sumptuous 6 course Chinese lunch arranged by Robert Bird, Raffles Marina’s Chief Executive Officer. One and a half hours passed quickly and it was soon time for him to bid farewell and leave for Changi Airport to catch his 4pm flight out to Bali. And Tork did so, bringing along with him the pleasant memories of his past 2 days’ experiences in his first visit to sunny Singapore.
