Bay of Islands Sailing Week comes to a perfect finish

by Roger McMillan and Lesley Haslar on 23 Jan 2010
The Bay of Islands Sailing Week has come to a perfect finish of three days of superb competition, with 10 – 25 knot breezes, a Beach Party to remember , skillful tactics on the water and loads of laughter.

In IRC, Limit finished on 10 points, three ahead of Georgia with Wired (30) in third. On general handicap the two 52s were nowhere to be seen. Limit again triumphed ahead of the Andy Ball's Sunfast 52 Sea Harmony and Boyd Smith's Robinson 56 Bare Essentials. On PHRF Limit completed the clean sweep ahead of Wired and Sababa, David Nathan's Farr 50.

Division B was won by Geoff Martlew's Ross 12m Pretty Boy Floyd on general handicap, followed by Rob Shaw's Shaw 9m Karma Police and Bullrush, the Elliott 12 of Anthony Robinson. Jive Talkin, the Davidson 10.5m chartered by Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club members Richard Hudson and Rob McClelland was sixth in the nine boat fleet.

In PHRF, the finish order was Karma Police, Deep Throttle (Justin Ferris) and Bobby's Girl and in IRC it was Bobby's Girl, Revs (Chris Hornell) and Jive Talkin’ (Richard Hudson).

There were 11 boats in Division C, which was won on general handicap by Paul Collins' Elliott 1050 High Voltage on 21 points, ahead of Stephen Miller's Farr 1020 Hicky Burr (23) and sister ship Hard Labour (Cameron Thorpe) on 31. High Voltage also won PHRF, with the Young 99 Mr Wolf second and Hicky Burr third.

Division D was the biggest division with 14 boats. Winner under general handicap was Max Newport's Loomes 10.8m Rock n Roll, ahead of Andrew Reid's First 34.7 First By Farr and the Young 88 Heartlight owned by Roger Sims. In PHRF First By Farr took the honours, ahead of Andrew Walker's SR 26 Mercenary and Heartlight

Division E comprised seven little boats, which also enjoyed some close tussles. General handicap was won by Mike Sherwood's 7.55m Dale Sunday Special, followed by Chris Browne's Davidson 28 Top Knot and the Whiting 29s Candela (James Duke) and Nexus (Cees Romeyn). Only four boats contested under PHRF, with Marara (Terry Dunn, S&S 10.23) first, Screw Loose (Martin Clark, Ross 780) second, Nexus third and Frivolous Fish (David Krebs, Elliott 5.9) fourth.

Premier Passage and Passage divisions had just one race each day. As the name would suggest they sailed around islands instead of doing windward/leewards.

John Graham's beautiful Warwick 50 Fez and Murray Walbran's Beale 42 Cruise Control were the fastest in Premier Passage, with Fez taking two races and Cruise Control one. Third was John Faire's Elliott 12.1 Terminator with three thirds. On general handicap, it was Nev Campbell's Atkinson 12.2 Kantime on six points, ahead of Cruise Control (8) and Fez (13) while Kantime also took PHRF with four points ahead of Cruise Control (6) and Kelvin Mulcare's modified Mt Gay 30 Fun-n-Games (8).

The Passage division had a healthy 12 entries and honours were shared. Dale Fenton's Farr 1020 Mesmerise took line honours with two firsts and a third, ahead of Kerry Mair's Ganley 17m Vision and Roy Goodwin's Elan 40 Royale both on nine. General handicap was won by Vision, with Royale second and Blue Newport's Lotus 10.6 Valentine third. In PHRF, the Farr 10.6 Charisma of Nelson, owned by Ian Wood, was first ahead of Mesmerise and Gambler. It was also great to see the graceful old Nicholson 45 Weatherly still racing well in this division.

With only five entries, the sports boat division was small but competitive. The Shaw 7 Orange Peeler (Grant McInnes), was able to clean-sweep line honours despite several capsizes. On handicap, it was Monkey Business, the Shaw 6.5 of Mathew Goddard that took the trophy on 22 points, two ahead of Orange Peeler and three ahead of third-placed Team Sex, the Magic 25 helmed by Anne Hirst.

Quotes from the last day:

From Alan Brierty (Limit) 'This is what we came for, to measure ourselves against Georgia and Wired. We need the international challenge and it’s been hard work. We beat Georgia over the line today by only 26 seconds in the first race – then it was her turn in the second race to show us a set of heals. We’ll be back'
From Jim Farmer (Georgia) 'The opportunity to measure Georgia against both Limit and Wired is what it’s all about. We had to work hard to stay between the two with the couple of firsts over the line making it all worth while

Rob Bassett (Wired): 'Racing against Limit and Georgia brings out the best in all of us. It’s been very close at times, and we just couldn’t quite make it. But It’s worth the challenge and we’ll be back'.

Chris Dickson (Limit): Special racing for me, and yes a chance to show-off the Bay. Nine races over 3 days is pretty touch racing.' (And from Chris’s wife Sue) 'A treat for us to just drive to a Regatta rather than fly all over the world – thank you Bay Regatta'

From Tim Willets (skipper Timberwolf): 'whoops, it was the closest we’ve ever been to tipping over at 9-pin. We had a bit of a screw-up and the (*^!*#**) 9-Pin wouldn’t get out of the way'

From Steve Miller (Hickey Burr): 'Good to race against the out-of-towners, but we needed more 1020’s. Maybe we could have the Nationals up here at the Bay Regatta in 2011?'

Adrian McHardy (Open Country): 'This is our fourth year here; we won our division in 2005. We sail up from Tauranga and take a two week cruising holiday. Graham Clouston and I are partners with Open Country and we both really enjoy coming up to race at Bay of Islands Sailing week. See you again next year'

From Paddy Simms (Race Officer A,B,M Divisions): 'Not a lot of time to see a lot of actual racing on the track; the starts are special with boats all trying to get in front over the same piece of water. Two or three boats over the line payed the penalty. The wind each day has ranged from 5 to 25 knots. Yep – heard occasional strong language but no collisions. Ray Haslar’s Jive Talkin’ sailed by the Aussies started off a bit slow, but improved noticeably. A difference without the old-master on board, but watch out today – she’s catching up.'

From Tony Dalbeth (Deep Throttle): Karma as usual has been great competition. There’s been tight racing in B Division, very close. At the start in races 7 and 8 there were at least 6 of us screaming toward the start line, the Race Committee were sweating as we missed each other – and them, by only millimetres, we’re sorry it’s over'

Tony Webb, (Judge from Auckland) offered his skills on the start boat for passage division. 'The skippers loved the courses, with no windward-leewards and using islands as markers – what more could you ask for'.

And finally from Volunteer Phil Harris (on a course working rib): 'We were moving around the Bay, G3 was racing toward us. She came toward us so ##** fast we had to slam forward at top speed. My eyes felt like they were out on stalks, heart beat at about 200/100 as she screamed past at about 30 knots – what a machine'

For full Results http://www.bayofislandssailingweek.org.nz/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=14&Itemid=21!click_here