Flying Fifteen Nationals- Goodmanson and Rowlands win on home waters

by Graeme Robinson on 6 Mar 2015 Aaron Goodmanson and Alister Rowlands sailing 'Ffortune' regained their title at the Winters Family Flying Fifteen National Championships sailed on their home waters in Lyttelton Harbour and consolidated their place as the most successful New Zealand crew in the Class history.

They won five of the nine races, to give them a comfortable lead of 6 points over 2014 champions Murray Gilbert and Jonathan Burgess from Auckland in 'Ffrenetic', who won three races. Third place went to the sole Napier crew, David Zorn & Graeme Robinson ('Business'), winners of one race.

The event was hosted by the Charteris Bay Yacht Club between 13-15 February 2015 and saw the full schedule of nine races completed over three days in a wide variety of conditions. Friday the 13th lived up to its reputation with strong southwesterly winds proving unlucky for all 14 crews at some stage of the day. Even the champions had some misfortune with a gust catching them during a spinnaker drop causing the kite to go under the bow, tearing it to shreds. They lost their huge lead and dropped back to seventh at one stage, but flew on the upwind beats and recovered to third place, despite only sailing with mainsail and jib on the run to the finish line.

All other boats swamped at least once on the windward legs as gusts of over 25 knots hit without warning, laying boats over, filling the cockpits with water and proving the need to carry bailers amongst the safety equipment aboard. It was good luck that safety checks were carried out before racing began.

Class President Chris Field’s 'Fflying Cloud' was holed in the only incident of the event and if he had not pumped up the air bags in the main aft compartment before racing began, he might have seen his boat sink by the stern into the murky waters of the Bay. Local retired boatbuilder and Class stalwart Paul Pritchett worked into the night and early on Saturday morning to get 'Fflying Cloud' onto the start line fit and ready for racing, only for its spinnaker pole to snap and spoil another race for the Auckland crew.

Neil Edmond, sailing 'Ice Fflower', his mother’s classic wooden-hulled Flying Fifteen, broke the boom in Race 1 and managed to repeat the effort on Saturday with a replacement boom, but only after he and Nigel Gallienne had recorded the only premature start in Race 5 of the series. Perseverance and determination paid off however with 3 races completed on the third day and a very creditable best placing of sixth.

Conditions were very much more manageable on Saturday, with a 10-15 knot southwest wind that had none of Friday’s vices. The flat waters and good local knowledge saw John Kennett and Chris Shannon in 'Ffirst Offspring' sail through with third and second and placings in the first two races of the day, which brought them up into fourth place overall. In the light breeze on Sunday, they continued their good form with a third placing in Race 8.

This gave them the Silver Fleet Trophy in the boat number 3088, the original Wiigybank hull, which was the first of the 'modern' Flying Fifteens that were built in New Zealand from a mould taken off 'Sniffer' after she was imported back in 1986. This pushed the newest boat in the fleet, 'The Godffather', hull number 4003 (Sally Garrett and Neil Easton) back into fifth place and clearly shows that the older well-designed boats are still very competitive, despite being nearly 30 years old.

Fred Price and David McIntyre in 'Ffeene' were awarded the Improvers Trophy for their consistent movement up through the fleet after their incident with the President on Friday 13th and Fred took out the Spencer Salver for the senior skipper (at age 72 years). Very tight competition between the boats from the Blues and Crusaders regions resulted in Canterbury just winning Pinkie’s Pot as the top fleet in the 2015 Flying Fifteen National Championships. It was a great event for all fifteen crews who competed and one of the highlights was to meet a good many of the old stalwarts of the Charteris Bay Yacht Club and the local Flying Fifteen Fleet who worked hard to ensure the success of the event, both on and off the water.

Now, Flying Fifteeners can look forward to the next National Championships, to be hosted by the Napier Sailing Club over Waitangi Weekend 2016. This will be a test event ahead of the Flying Fifteen World Championships to be held at the same venue in February 2017. There are a number of Flying Fifteens in boatsheds around the country and it is expected that many will be brought out and sailed in the coming two years build-up to the next World Championships.

This is also a great opportunity for sailors from other classes to try their hands in a friendly, competitive two-handed International Class of racing dinghy-with-a-keel in New Zealand, at very reasonable cost. There is a range of boats for sale, from early classics (which race as a separate class when number are sufficient) through to those that have the latest modern hull shapes. There are also opportunities to purchase and set up new boats.

In the meantime, it is expected that at least two of the crews from the National Championships will be heading to Crozon-Morgat in Brittany, France for the 2015 World Championships that will take place in August this year.