2023 Auckland ILCA Champs, 1st & 2nd April at Tamaki YC.

• Standard ILCA Results
• Radial ICLA Results
• Photos

The Open and Youth raced both Saturday and Sunday. The Masters regatta was just the Saturday.

Conditions on Saturday kept everyone honest with a 12-14 knot northerly coupled with an incoming tide flowing across the course and a typical tricky chop that made the venturi pretty important upwind and wave catching technically difficult on the runs.

The strongest breeze was experienced by the RAYC team which launched out of Okahu Bay, unaware of the calamity of bad luck that the race committee were working hard to address and ended up milling about for an extra hour while the rest of the fleet chilled out on the TYC ramp.

In the 28 strong radial fleet, Greta Pilkington unleashed her devastatingly quick downwind speed to end the day with a commanding lead including three bullets and a second from four races – the only waves she missed were the few that washed by while she righted her boat after death rolling on the last race of the day.

Top Youth Louie Poletti, now based in Auckland, bounced back to from a slow start to be second at the end of the day.

In the masters event, Phil Wild (M) made some good recoveries to defend the masters title and finish the day 3rd overall while local favourite Phil Bennett (AM) strung some impressive results together to be 2nd master, 6th overall and Raglan sailor Dave Johnson (M) just behind to be 3rd master, 7th overall. Pt Chev battler Kirsty MacDonald (GM) defended her women’s masters tile ahead of Georgina Wooldridge (GM) and Marie France (AM) respectively. It was also great to see participation in this category increasing.

The top of the full rig fleet saw a tight battle between Samoan Olympic representative (and proud dad) Eroni Leilua and previous Radial Auckland Champ champ, Matthew Rist, locked in a dead heat after day one.

In the masters event, big Tony Nicholson (GM) claimed the title with a consistent performance to sit 3rd overall ahead of Doug Anderson (GM) in 2nd ( 4th overall) and Karl Nicholson (M) in 3rd (5th overall).

Sunday was very different with a light to variable breeze wafting down the harbour with tide continuing to run in over the course of the day.

With flat water, brutally patchy and shifty conditions, the race committee (Garth, Sandy Grigg & Bob Blakely) called upon its combined 230+ years of experience to run three short sprint races and successfully complete the race schedule.

The conditions certainly levelled the playing field with fleets congealing on the runs giving everyone a chance of slipping through.

In the radial fleet, Greta did more than enough to take out the event, no doubt employing some of her European experience of sailing in tight fleets in light conditions.

A consistent performance saw Phil Wild sneak into 2nd overall with Louie Poletti finishing 3rd overall.

Daniella Wooldridge claimed first female youth ahead of Naiomi Ferrissey and Chloe Turner respectively.

Special mentions have to be made to Josh Edmonds (AM) who surged up the leader board to 4th overall with the best performance of the day (2, 3, 1) and to Stefano Santella who took out race six.

In the full rig, the close battle resumed between the two highly ranked sailors with Eroni Leilua eventually winning the championship by one point over Matthew Rist.

Cook Island representative Villi Ratalulu (Y) completed the regatta to finish 3rd overall.