Big Prize at stake in CBRE RNZYS Club Championship

From the Sailing Office

Hello everyone, It is great to be back out on the water this summer. We kicked off the season with the Harken Auckland Match Racing Championships at the start of December, which is also qualifier for the Harken NZ Match Racing National Championships held at the club. The event saw eight teams racing over two days, with Robbie McCutchen’s team taking out the event.

We also managed to get some weeknight club racing in just before Christmas, and finally after the 3rd attempt of dodging lockdowns and bad weather, we got the Barfoot & Thompson Bridge to Bean Rock race away.

The Bridge to Bean Rock race was a RNZYS 150th event for sailing dinghies racing from the Harbour Bridge to Bean Rock. Originally we had 200 entries for this event, but after two reschedules we ended up with 86 of many varying designs on the startline. It turned out to be a great event with a lot of interest to re-run in the future.

In January, we managed to squeak both in the 2022 New Zealand Starling Match Racing Nationals back-to-back with the rescheduled 2021 Harken New Zealand Match Racing Nationals. Both were great events. The highlight was an epic final series between world number three Nick Egnot-Johnson and a Mastercard Performance Programme team helmed by RNZYS Youth Training Programme Coach Reuben Corbett.

Nothing separated the teams all regatta, with two distinctive styles: Nick’s polished teamwork and boat speed against Reuben’s aggressive, dominating pre-starts and experienced boat positioning. It looked like Reuben’s team had it wrapped up in the fifth and final race of the finals, but a costly boat handling error at the finish line gave Nick’s team an opportunity that they pounced on, winning by less than half a metre.

Club racing has been ticking along well with the Doyle Sails Wednesday Night races as popular as ever. We have a MRX sprint racing series on Tuesday nights. This has seen some close one design racing with some great sailors involved. Harry Dodson is currently leading the series over Phil Douglas.

Etchells, Elliott 7 sprints, Havana Club Rum racing, Y88 sprints and the Barfoot & Thompson Ladies Series have all started now. I am racing in the Etchells series again this season, which has seen some incredibly tight racing, especially now with Nick Egnot-Johnson joining the fleet in the RNZYS boat Bobbys Girl and Andrew Wills returning with a gun crew after missing most of the season last year.

If it’s not Covid restrictions, it has been the weather, which has seen some unseasonally strong winds coming through at the start of this season. The latest victim has been Squadron Weekend, which at the time of writing was about to start. With the forecast showing gusts of over 40 knots on Sunday morning, we changed the format to race home Saturday morning and avoid the worst of it.

We are very lucky to have Denise Bailey join the team in a volunteer capacity as the new Volunteer Coordinator. She has already proved her worth by helping us come up with a strategy around splitting the volunteers into groups to reduce the risk of all the volunteers being forced to isolate at the same time due to a Covid outbreak.

Here is to a great second half of the summer.

Laurie Jury, Sailing Director