The 2015 North Harbour Masters was held at Lake Pupuke on 8 November, attracting a good fleet of 26 Masters; 20 Standard and 6 Radial and including several out of town visitors. The weather gods turned on a beautiful el nino spring day, fine and warm but unfortunately with a very light and variable westerly breeze. 

All Results

Pupuke is never easy but with the wind regularly shifting up to 45 degrees and many flat spots between the puffs everyone found it challenging and no one was able to consistently dominate, although the Pupuke fleet members showed out in the final results, indicating that maybe local knowledge counted for something, even though none of us could actually figure out what! In the standards there were 5 different winners in the 5 races while in the Radial 3 sailors scored bullets.
 
At the end of the day the final results in the Standards came down to a countback, with Nick Page (GM) coming out on top from Gary Lock (GM) by virtue of having managed a win in race 2. There was another tie for 3^rd and 4^th with Tony Nicholson (M) edging out club commodore John Dowsett (GM), again by virtue of securing a race win. Club stalwart John was extremely unlucky not to triumph having the best 3 race score for the day (2,2,3) but getting caught out by shifts in the other 2 races.  It was great to see Michelle Bain (WM) join the fleet as the start of her preparations for the 2017 World Master Games Laser event at Torbay and we hope to see many more new or returning faces through the season as we build towards the 2017 contest.
 
In the Radials it again took a tie break to determine the winner by the slimmest of margins, with Murray Bain  (M) only triumphing by virtue of a superior discard from Georgi Yankov (M), with both sailors counting 2 wins and 2 seconds. Third and leading Apprentice was Vladimir Minkov.
 
So another successful start to the seasons Masters regattas and we look forward to strong fleets at the upcoming SI champs at Charteris Bay, NI’s in Napier and Sir Peter Blake regatta at Torbay over the next few weeks.
 
Nick Page