The Navy White Christmas is the social highlight in the Navy calendar and the perfect excuse – and usually the only one – to put on the crisp white uniform and impress girls far and wide! And yes, of course, it’s all for a good cause!

The good cause being The Hong Kong Sea School for which we have been raising funds for the past two years now. Based in Stanley, the Sea School has always been very supportive of the Navy and, knowing that the school caters to a lot of children from a poor family background and hence relies to a large extent on sponsorships and private donations, we made it our fund raising objective to beat last year’s total of more than HKD 30,000.

To do so, we assembled our splendid-looking crew and their equally gorgeous better halves at OTTO Lounge in Lan Kwai Fong for three hours of open bar and a few games to coax the cash out of the boys (and girls). The traditional Navy quiz usually yields the most dough, given our Sailors' total ignorance of arts, history, culture, race rules, crew knowledge, mathematics, accounting or other basic facts of live. Asked to name all the Official Sponsors of the Navy in Question 1, Drummer Girl Sarah could only repeat Foster’s several times, completely forgetting to mention her employer as the key financial backer of the Navy. It went downhill from there.

Also joining the party was the lovely Chief Torture Officer June in a very appropriate Sailor outfit. All single Sailors were hence duly required to individually get down on their knees and make a creative marriage proposal given that she is engaged to be married to a paddler of a rival team. None however was successful (although POFC Martin should be commended for putting up a valiant effort that resulted in a “maybe”), yielding yet plenty more cash for charity.

Finally, we auctioned off a few exclusive Navy items, including a replica dragon boat made entirely of chocolate. Of course, Able Seaman Rene couldn’t just leave it at the dragon boat; he also had to throw in two large solid chocolate phallic objects, both of which were fought over fiercely by the ladies in the room (including Sailor Woody).

With our open bar closing we headed – as usual – into the streets of LKF to try and squeeze more money out of the drunken public, mostly in return for pictures with the Navy. As always, it was especially the Navy ladies who did a marvelous job convincing people that the charity was for real and that we were not just collecting beer money.

When it was all said and done, the donation box yielded a total of HKD 25,600. Adding to that a few online donations, plus a HKD 10,000 donation from LGT Bank and CFO Fred's generous offer to sponsor an individual student for an entire year, the Navy raised a Grand Total of HKD 52,700. Congratulations and thank you to all who have contributed to another fantastic Navy White Christmas!