2015 Masters Worlds, Kingston, Canada - Nick Page's Perspective

Kingston is a quaint town at the mouth of the St Lawrence Seaway where it exits Lake Ontario.

This was important because;

It was a nice place to be and kept the other half's happy; weather was good and water warm despite the fact that only a few months ago it was meter thick ice
It is really a slow flowing river we sailed on, not a lake, which was critical if one was silly enough to try and squeeze a mark against the current and definitely affected which side of the course was favoured, sometimes.
Where we sailed it was about 1.5 miles from the shore at Kingston to the opposite island shore, meaning that wherever the wind came from it was sort of an offshore breeze, with the associated variations in pressure and direction. Worst the day it came from the N but still applied to the S wind days.
There seemed to be no real weight in the breezes, warm air off the lake meant 12 knots felt like 8 at home so even when the regatta report says 12 knots most of the day it felt like the hiking strap was often more of a weight adding feature than a required one.

The net result of this was that sailing in Kingston posed many challenges to the mortals; as I said to one person who asked……train on Pupuke and expect the shifts to be larger and the pressure to be more variable……then add waves and current. Kingston is a tricky place to sail. The general wisdom was that you go left in Kingston. Well, with the exception of the last day when the rule definitely applied it was more like Right paid first beat, left second, left paid first downwind, right second etc etc. Really weird chop with reflection off the sea wall near the bottom of the course, just plain tricky. Question for the day for me was often: is a pressure knock better than a lull lift…….if only I knew the answer.

The really top guys, Scott, Adonis, Peter Shope in our GM fleet etc seem to have the speed to get there every race but for the rest of us the brain cells were fried by the end of each race.

Given the above, as usual the cream rose to the top and the results in most divisions were that the truly great sailors won, many good sailors did well but others just got confused and the rest of us wondered how the top guys did it with such consistency.

For team NZ that meant Scott did it again in the Apprentice Masters Radial, and congratulations to him on another well earned world title cube. Matt Blakey showed exceptional consistency to finish second and get a cube in the AM Standards behind current Greek Olympic sailor Adonis Bougiouris. Both Bob Blakey and Michael Shields showed that they had fried far less brain cells than many of the younger members of the team, with Bob 3rd in the GGM Standard and Mike 3rd in the Radial 75+ division. Other notable team performances were Mike Knowsley’s 4th in the Masters Radial and Roger Winton 7th in the GM Radials and Andrew Dellabarca, 11th in a very strong Masters Standard Fleet.

The rest of us enjoyed the regatta, recruited for the 2017 Masters Games in our spare time and generally enjoyed somewhat variable results on the water.

Given the at times trying conditions the regatta was extremely well managed and we are all looking forward to the opportunity to do it all again in Mexico in 2016 with the promise of “guaranteed” fresh sea breezes and real waves….time will tell.

Nick Page