Excitement builds to the Sunburst 50 yr celebrations & 2014 Nationals

by Nigel Price on 16 Jan 2014
<There seem to be Sunbursts coming out of the woodwork from far and wide for the Sunburst 50th celebrations at Wakatere Boating Club next weekend (Friday January 17 - Monday January 20. 2014).

Interest in the weekend’s activities has been high, with a lot of people who sailed in the class in earlier days keen to participate in the proceedings, along with the expected 70 competitors. Saturday 18th January is the main afternoon and evening of celebration events.

Concurrently the 2014 Class Nationals will be run. There will be 2 fleets, - one with spinnaker and a fleet of non spinnaker boats to cover Sea Scouts, Young Mariners and others whose boats are not set up with kites. There are 9 boats from the Otago fleet and 4 boats from Canterbury that have already been shipped up, as well as 14 Wellington based boats coming. This is a geographical spread of competitors that you would expect from a true National Class.

A lot of work has been done to collect, write and publish a booklet full of stories and photos that illustrate some of the activities in the Class over the 50 years.

The Sunburst is a legacy class that is well established , and continues to have good numbers sailing at many yacht clubs throughout the country. Favourites for the titles include Andrew and Cam Brown (Auckland), Brett and Penny Linton (Wellington) and defending champions Jake and Ben Hawker (Otago). Many of the crews are made up of sailor who raced sunbursts in their teens, and are now returning to the class sailing with their young kids as crew.

Some of the other well known names include Matthew Bouzaid, Simon Manning, Scott Beavis, and Lincoln Fraser – all sailing with their children as the class was originally designed for. A surprising number of middle aged and even veteran sailors are sailing in the class also. It makes for a unique age spread in a centreboard sailing fleet.

The Sunburst was designed in 1963 by John Brooke after being approached by the NZ Weekly News magazine to design a general purpose dinghy suitable for sailing, rowing or using with a small outboard. The first boats were launched in 1964 and the class rapidly grew with boats being sailed in many yacht clubs up and down the country. To date 1821 sunbursts have been built.

Details of the event are on the www.wakatere.org.nz website.