2014 Sunburst Nationals- Andrew and Cameron Brown win 50th Regatta

by Nigel Price on 23 Jan 2014
The 2014 Sunburst Nationals Event was held at the Wakatere Boating Club, Narrow Neck, Devonport on January 18, 19 and 20.

With the Sunburst Class celebrating 50 years since the launch of the first boat in 1964, a special celebration event was run in conjunction with the Nationals. A huge amount of work was done by the organising committee to encourage boats from far and wide, and we eventually ended up with a fleet totalling 69 boats, split into 2 fleets of spinnaker and non spinnaker divisions. With 9 boats from Otago, 3 from Canterbury, 1 from the West Coast, 14 from Wellington, and the rest from the greater Auckland area, there was a good geographical spread of competitors.

Andrew Brown, sailing with his son Cameron sailing #1434 'Vagrant' won the event quite convincingly with 7 wins in the 8 race series, and scoring 7 points.

2nd overall was Lincoln & Benjamin Fraser sailing #1545 'Starblaze' with 26 points,
3rd overall was Brett & Penny Linton sailing #1530 'Rhythm & Swing' with 31 points.
4th overall was Simon & Jack Manning sailing #1781 'Envy' with 33 points.
5th overall was Nick & Flinn Olson sailing #1661 'Crazy Bouyz' with 42 points.

The conditions varied from very light winds, sometimes with holes to steady moderate sea breezes.

The main fleet comprised 51 boats. A surprising number of boats were UFDed for being over on the long start line in the light winds and strong tides on Saturday and Sunday.

We had a huge amount of positive feedback from the competitors about the great job done by the team of Race Officials of Janet Watkins, Dean Coleman, Oscar Paulich and Ted Frankham who had some trying times getting races completed during the first two days of the regatta.

As is usual in the Sunburst Class, there are lots of trophies and prizes for different categories of competitors.

The Taihoa (non spinnaker) class was won by Seb Jones, and Oscar Garcia of Calliope Sea Scouts from an 18 boat fleet. They sailed on a separate part of the laid quadrilateral course after starting 5 minutes behind the main fleet.

There is a full list of these category prizes and results on the Wakatere Boating Club website Website