The local International One -Design fleet will see plenty of action on the water when the island hosts the 72nd Bermuda Gold Cup and a Women’s World Match Racing Tour regatta concurrently for the first time from October 28 to November 3.

Organisers the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club have taken on the challenge of running the World Match Racing Tour sanctioned Bermuda Gold Cup and new women’s match racing event on the same racecourse during the week-long spectacle and are looking forward to it.

“We’re absolutely thrilled to be able to offer this double-header of both top-level Open and Women’s Match Racing on Bermuda’s Hamilton Harbour,” said John Corless, former RBYC commodore and Bermuda Gold Cup chairperson.

“The World Match Racing Tour approached the club about adding a women’s event on the calendar and our Organising Committee looked long and hard at the logistics of being able to offer two events in one calendar year.

“Running the two regattas concurrently will make efficient use of race management personnel and will only add to the already exciting match racing in the Harbour.”

WMRT executive director James Pleasance is “very excited” the RBYC has agreed to add a new Women’s World Match Racing Tour event to the Gold Cup this year.

“Our key mission for the Women’s WMRT is to expand and promote opportunities for competitive women’s sailing at the highest level, and having a new event in such an iconic venue like Bermuda is doing just that,” he added.

In order to host two events, the Bermuda Gold Cup format will be ten teams in a single group.

The women’s event will feature eight of the world’s top female match racing teams and will be the first ever women’s sailing regatta in Bermuda to also award prize money.

Both events will be contested in the 33-foot IOD sloop with the format for the regatta to consist of a round robin, quarter-final, semi-final, petite final and final rounds.

Planning the dates for this year’s event has taken into consideration the much anticipated 37th America’s Cup, scheduled to conclude by October 20.

The Bermuda Gold Cup returned to the World Match Racing Tour last October with Sweden’s Johnie Berntsson and his fellow team-mates triumphantly raising the prestigious King Edward VII Gold Cup for the third time.

The King Edward VII Trophy, awarded to the winner of the Bermuda Gold Cup, is the oldest trophy in the world for a competition involving one-design yachts.

First presented in 1907 by King Edward VII at the Tricentenary Regatta at Jamestown, Virginia, honouring the 300th anniversary of the first permanent colony in America, the trophy is the only King’s Cup ever to be offered for competition in the United States which could be won outright.