Photos - Suellen and livesaildie.com

More of the same - but its great!

We woke to 100% cloud cover and no wind, not a good sign for a sea breeze, but the cloud eventually burnt off and a light sea breeze again filled in, although the start of racing had to be delayed until 3pm. As in the past 2 days it was pretty light, patchy and shifty but all fleets completed 3 good quality races to keep the contest on track. The tide continued to be a factor, with a number of general recalls, black flag starts and unfortunately a few OCS's.

While it could have been dubbed "moving day"  it was more a consolidation day for many of the leaders in all the fleets.

In the ILCA 6, 2024 Olympic rep Greta Pilkington continued her dominance, winning the days first 2 races and establishing a strong 17 point lead over the rest of the fleet. In a near repeat of yesterday Sam Clark (Y) again won a race, but struggled in the first two races to drop to 6th overall. Beau Utting had a super impressive day with two thirds and a forth to move into 4th, tied on points with ex World Champ George Lane in 5th. The two leading Youths boys improved their overall standings, with Greta's brother Tom moving up to 2nd overall and Arran Begic to 3rd, after both posted solid results in all 3 races. Chloe Turner continued her very impressive run of results to remain leading Youth Girl in 8th overall and notably only one place behind the second open women sailor, UK visitor Coco Barrett.

In the ILCA 7 it was Dylan Forsyth's day, with two wins and a second to move him into a three point lead overall over Caleb Armit, who split two thirds with an OCS in the days second race. U21's George Pilkington and  Zach Stibbe continued their battle for U21 supremacy and remain 3rd and 4th overall, but George had by far the better of the day with a race win and two seconds to sit only 3 points behind Caleb and a solid 13 points ahead of Zach.  The battle for the overall Masters supremacy continued between top GM Andrew Dellabarca, local AM Tim Pitcaithly and Whangarei Kris Dekke (M), who still sit 5th, 6th and 7th overall, but Tim and Andrew swapped places, with Tim moving into 4th overall after a super consistent 5th placings in all 3 of todays races. 

In the ILCA 6 masters fleet GM Werner Hennig from Hamilton had a consistent but less spectacular day, dropping to 3rd overall, but just 3 points from the lead. Josh Edmonds (A) was however the one to impress today, winning two races to move into the overall lead by just two points from defending champion Phil Wild (M), who was second in all of todays 3 races. Roger Winton (GM) again scored a race win, in  todays last race, to move into 4th while Sandra Williams continues to lead the women division and Graham Tee the GGM's.

Local sailor Brooke Mundy was the standout sailor of the day, winning all 3 ILCA 4  races to take over the lead in the fleet from Lucy Luxford, who's two 2nd's and a third keep her within striking distance of Brooke. 

So yet another challenging day in Nelson ("its never like this in Nelson" according the the locals!), with three races completed in spite of the challenging weather conditions! Tomorrow's forecast is for something different, with a light to moderate Easterly forecast ,which is sure to throw up some new challenges. 2 races are scheduled to complete the championships, so we hope we can get them all through before the 3:30 start time cutoff .

Nick Page 
ILCA.nz

Day 1 photo's - thanks Suellen and livesailedie.com

A challenging sea breeze to open

A pretty much capacity field of 104 ILCA sailors lined up for first 2 races of the 2025 Scott Construction NZ ILCA Championships at Nelson Yacht Club today. After the regatta was officially opened by Nelson mayor Nick Smith, racing got underway in classic Nelson sunshine, with blues skies and a building sea breeze. Race 1 started after a bit of a delay for the sea breeze to properly establish and for the first race of the day all 3 fleets; 38 in the ILCA 7,  35 in the ILCA 6 and 31 the combined ILCA 6 Master and ILCA 4's, enjoyed an 7 to 10 knots sea breeze with a nice chop, although it was quite shifty and there were plenty of holes and tidal sets to trap the unwary. The breeze had faded a little by the start of the second race, and got really tricky as it continued to drop as the race went on. This, combined with with the significant tidal flow across the course area caused by big spring tides, made conditions for all fleets pretty testing. All 3 fleets however completed the planned 2 races and generally the favourites were to the fore in spite of the tricky conditions.