TRAVEL BREAKS
ROSS THORBY: MY FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH SAILING WAS ON A 14 FOOT HOBIE CAT Mother had done a sailing-for-ironing deal one summer with the housework-shy mother of the owner of the local squadron of rentable Hobie Cats. In an arrangement, forged over a glass of Stone’s Green Ginger Wine and a cheddar and pineapple cheeseboard, my brother and I gained unlimited access to the flotilla of small sailing craft and all the beaches and surf that only a childhood in the Bay of Islands could provide. With the endless summers of our youth we made good on the opportunity. Without any professional lessons or any clue other than trial and error, we learnt to tack and trim our way from one side of the bay to the other whilst Mother slaved over a hot iron and a shaky ironing board. Oh what sacrifices our parents made - just to keep us out of hair and house. Long halcyon summer days in the ‘70s were spent skipping over the sharp peaks and shallow marine troughs whipped up by the bay’s sou’easterlies and nor’westers, in great mini-regattas fought to the death between rivalling siblings who shared just the briefest of connections. We discovered, as most sailing boats do when pushed to their limits, that the small catamarans in our charge had one specific fatal flaw; if you sat in a particular position at speed and manipulated the sails just enough, the craft would dig into the water causing it to somersault or ‘pitch pole’, a trick we learnt as 12 and 13 year-olds to use to our great amusement. Team New Zealand would publicly expose the same flaw much to this country’s chagrin in San Francisco many years later, although admittedly on a more advanced boat, but the physics were still the same. We also managed to sink more than one of the cats and often had to be towed back to shore by a passing speedboat, us sitting astride the semi-submerged vessel only to re-float again in the shallows and immediately return to the open waters. Another experience shared with the America’s Cup contenders. Decades and a sense of self-preservation have now settled in since those carefree death-defying experiences, but the vestiges of those memories live on as I watch a new generation of sailors, some of whom started their sailing careers in much the same way as we hobbyists albeit with a different and more lucrative outcome. But did I say ‘sailors’? Today’s ‘sailors’ might as well be called ‘pilots’ as they sit aboard craft evolved a million miles more distant from those small 14 foot cats we once sailed; comparative space ships against a horse and cart. Sailors who are perhaps now more expert in aeronautics and ‘lift’ than a pilot on a Boeing Dreamliner. Anybody who has watched the America’s Cup since we first became aware of it in Perth with Denis Connor in 1987 has watched in awe the leaps and bounds in technology that the sport has produced with each new challenge. Every new event has brought along some great advancement or some ‘tickling’ of the limits of the rules; the ‘plastic fantastic’, the introduction of the catamaran, the onboard ‘cyclors’ and now the new foils. It’s truly a sport for technologists with the excitement of the races and the more extravagant speeds that they can now achieve with each additional knot of wind. The technology ‘bleed’ will benefit more than just the race itself, much like what NASA did with the microwave and Velcro.
52 PONSONBY NEWS+ February 2021
Foils are already seen in hydrofoiling bicycles and surfboards. Are cruise ships next? I yearn for the day the Queen Mary 2 leaves our harbour with the commodore announcing, “Ladies and Gentlemen please take your seats as we are about to raise up on our foils for our trip across the Tasman.” The thrill of sitting on Te Rehutai as she flies through the air must be palpable. A vision of beauty, she and her compatriot boats must bring about an awe-inspiring rush of adrenaline to those onboard as they ply around the course. For me it’s a flutter of the heart and the thrill of a memory back to a youth spent on my first Hobie Cat. The Prada and America’s Cup are much more than racing, especially in these days of Covid-19. We have the world looking at us and wondering how the little country that could, did; how, while the rest of the world wears masks and worries about random coughing we can hold an international event and marvel at how a little kiwi really can fly. (ROSS THORBY) PN roscoesseafever.blogspot.com
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