Day 1 Results

Napier turned on a lovely warm day with a light sea breeze for the opening day of the 2024 ILCA (Laser) NZ Nationals. A bit of high cloud made it very humid and prevented the sea breeze ever getting much over 8 knots for the first two scheduled races of the contest. Th breeze was quite patchy with a small chop, but it provided great conditions for close racing right through the 100 strong fleet.

In the 47 boat ILCA 6 fleet it was a fantastic day for the Napier locals, with Finn Balchin taking out race 1, Winston Liesebach race 2 and Rose Dickey leading the youth girls at the end of the day. Both Finn and Winston had good results in the days other race, to sit second and third overall, but neither were quite good enough to prevent Louie Poletti from Murrays Bay leading overall, as well as being the leading youth boy, after scoring a 2nd place in both races. The first 3 are followed closely by an extremely close contest for the leading woman's spot. Naiomi Ferrissey ended the day a single point ahead of Fiji's Sophia Morgan and Greta Pilkington, who recently qualified NZ for the Olympics. Both Sophia and Greta are on 12 points and as both are freshly returned from the World ILCA 6 Champs in Argentina there is sure to be some close racing in that group over the balance of the contest. Reigning World ILCA 6 men's champion George Lane was heard to comment that he did "not find the conditions easy", and sits 7th overall.

There are many familiar names at the head of the ILCA 6 Masters, with Murrays Bays Master Phil Wild using his great downwind speed to ensure two bullets. He leads fellow Masters Ed Tam and Dave Johnson at the top of the table. The leading GM, in 4th place overall, is Hamiltons Werner Hennig, while the leading GGM is Graeme Tee from Ohope in 6th overall. Helen Spencer is the leading Women's Masters. A great 6th in the first race set her up for the day, although consistency eluded her, with her race 2 somewhat less successful!\

The small but high quality ILCA 4 fleet shared the starting line with the ILCA 6 Masters. Tom Pilkington looks to be carrying on the family dynasty of success in ILCA racing winning both races and lead overall. Hermione Aris sits second and is the leading women.

In the ILCA 7 fleet the 26  Masters and Open sailors are sailing together as a single fleet. With our top 6 Olympic sailors all in Adelaide for the Open worlds the title will go to someone new this year. After 2 races leading Master Scott Leith, and leading Open sailor George Pilkington are tied at the top of the table with a win and a second each after 2 very tightly fought races. Third overall, and being welcomed back to the ILCA nationals after an absence of quite a few years, is ex Open World Champion, now Master, Nik Burfoot. Open sailor Max Faulkner sits in a solid 4th overall followed by a group of past masters winners; GM's Andrew Dellabarca and Rohan Lord and Onerahi Master Kris Decke. We are welcoming 2 Irish Masters visitors this year, who are having a stop off on their way to the Masters World in Adelaide. Having spun us a good Irish yarn, telling us its way too cold at home  and that they had done no preparation and have "hardly sailed", Bill O'Hara had really solid days to be leading the GGM's in 10th overall, while I suspect Conrad is looking for a wee bit more breeze to stamp his authority on the contest.

So a great first day to kick off the 2024 nationals. The weather forecast for the next 3 days looks promising, with moderate breezes predicted, so we hope to see tomorrows 3 races completed on scheduled.

Nick Page
 

• Results thanks to Napier Sailing Club
• Photo's - thanks to Suellen and livesaildie.com

• Results

Auckland delivered what seemed like the 100th cyclone affected weather pattern for the season for the 2023 North Shore Freshwater Champs at Lake Pupuke on 20th and 21st May. The result was two days of fresh to strong W to SW winds, with Saturdays racing curtailed after 2 races when the gusts got to around 30 knots, and while Sunday was a bit more manageable, with the gusts probably never getting much over 20 knots, there were plenty of the usual lake shifts and holes to negotiate and the odd torrential rain squall just for good measure!

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.
 

• Part of the Bayleys Taupo LTYC Centreboard Regatta
• 11th & 12th March 2023
• Results
• Photos on Facebook

The New Zealand Masters Games were held in Whanganui in early February where circa 5000 aging weekend warriors descended on the otherwise out of the way city in the Manawatu. The event location alternates each year between Dunedin and Whanganui. The sailing discipline was a nine-race series over three days held downstream in the river out of the well-resourced Whanganui Sailing Club. Long time organiser, Lindsay Stevenson, along with his team, did a fantastic job in making the most of what they had to work with as the river was in flood with all sorts of things careering down the heavily silt laden water way. The Race committee also had the added constraint of having to get races away within a tight window before they ran out of water.

While numbers were significantly down on previous years, the small “laser” fleet punched above its weight with multiple class national champion, David Feek, former YNZ supremo and youth world silver medallist, Craig Gilbert, respected Javelin sailor David Brown and radial sailor Phil Wild, all in the mix. Day One was light air – to the point where out of towners are still trying to figure how the fleet made it around the highly tide affected course. However, the RO and team showed the fleet who’s boss and got in three solid races. The second day was light to moderate with the fleet zipping around the track quick enough to be back on shore in time to go check out some of the other sports going on. The third day was forecast to get hectic with gusts up above 25-30Knots….which did happen over the last few legs of race nine: while the laser fleet got around relatively unscathed, there was carnage at the last turning mark in the paper Tiger Fleet where one boat got stuck upside down and the skipper of another was cleaned out by the boom, requiring medical assistance (thankfully he was fine the following day).

The event will be held in Dunedin next year which is likely to boast a very strong fleet. However, in a couple of years time, if you’re up for something different and would like to check out a classic Kiwi town with good entertainment put on in the evenings, maybe give this a go.

Phil Wild