Editorial- Racing, Racing and still more Racing!

by nzeditor@sail-world.com on 1 May 2006 Welcome to the Monday edition of Sail-World.

With the overlap of the international and local seasons, there has been plenty of action to follow over the weekend.

In the In Port Race for the Volvo OR, we have seen the Farr designs redeem themselves to take the first four place sin the now seven boat fleet. Race leader, ABN Amro One finished in the tail of the fleet.

There have been further crew changes aboard Ericsson Racing with New Zealand’s Richard Bouzaid stepping aboard into a trimming role. Not that there are any set places aboard the under-crewed Volvo 70 class, and Bouzaid will be a very useful addition.

The SOF Hyeres regatta wrapped up on Saturday, with New Zealand missing out on the medals, but improving in each of the five classes in which Kiwis made the Medal Race. New Zealand sailors (all singlehanders) finished fourth in three events.

We also feature news from a couple of Kiwi Olympic aspirants. New addition to the YNZ 2006 Olympic Squad, Hamish Pepper, updates progress with the Star campaign he is running with Carl Williams, and stand-in crew, David Chiles. It’s good to hear that in spite of some great results in all the regattas they have sailed to date, Hamish believes they have a lot of untapped potential.

It was also great to hear from Sara Winther, who is competing in the Laser Radial class. She gives her inside story on the Hyeres regatta and places her results in context. Sara is building up towards the Europeans and World championships, but will first compete in the ISAF Games in Austria.

On the Waitemata there was plenty of action in the Keelboat classes with Nationals for the Farr 727 and Pied Piper classes. Both attracted fleets of 19 boats which is an exceptional effort. Competition in both was very keen.

On Saturday, we saw the first race in the Canon Cup for the Stewart 34 class – another good fleet of 16 boats competing. The Zephyr Nationals were also sailed in the weekend with a fleet of 24 boats entered. We expect to have the results for Wednesday.

Some sad news from Fremantle, with one of New Zealand’s more colourful sailors, Chris Packer in Fremantle Hospital, having suffered a serious heart attack. Our thoughts go out to his family and friends at this time.

One of the boats which caught our eye on Sunday was the una rigged 12ft skiff. We understand from class sources that this is a ‘conventional’ design hull, but modified, and is carrying a 9 metre una rig (that’s on a hull that is 3.7metres long!) We look forward to seeing the heavy air shots!

Over in our rowing website, Rowing-World.com we have run a number of statistical breakdowns of the Maadi 2006 medal winners - where they came from, and which province is performing the best. It is, and always has been, a very controversial subject within rowing circles. However it is apparent that with good coaching and development programs some provinces are able to punch well above their weight. It is an interesting read, even from a sailing perspective. After all both Rowing and Sailing are Olympic boat sports and many issues are common to both.

Until Wednesday!

Good Sailing!

Richard Gladwell
NZ Editor

PS Please keep the reports coming in from your event or class. Please forward by email to nzeditor@sail-world.com