Regional Match Racing Training Camp held in Wellington

by Port Nicholson Yachting Trust on 5 Jul 2012
The July School Holidays have been a busy time for the Port Nicholson Yachting Trust Youth Scheme. The past four days has seen four teams from as far away as New Plymouth and Dunedin descend on the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club for a chance to sail on the Youth Scheme Elliott 6 keelboats.

The programme has included two days of boat handling and basic match racing training delivered by Youth Scheme Coach Chris Jones before rolling into a match racing regatta for the final two days. With the aim of the training camps to produce more teams to compete in the New Zealand Youth Match Racing Nationals to be hosted by the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club from 27-30 September 2012.

Wednesday saw a light start to the first round robin with a shifty southerly inside Lambton Harbour and Wellington’s Stadium of Sailing. This made for some very difficult sailing (and race management) conditions which were handled very well by the team from Queen Charlotte Yacht Club (Callum Radford, Nick Gardiner, Seren Adams & Hamish Baxter) to be leading after the first round robin. However the combined team from Christchurch/Wanganui (Daniel Philpot, Leyton Hern, Dylan Matthews and Johnny Matthews) made a comeback during round robin two, with both teams tied on 5 wins and 1 loss each at the end of the preliminary rounds. The tie was broken in favour of the Christchurch/Wanganui team, who qualified in top spot for the semi-finals.

However, the Wellington weather which never fails to surprise pulled a southerly breeze of 20 plus knots and rain bringing a new challenge for the sailors. The semi finals saw the Christchurch/Wanganui team taking on the team from Timaru/Kapiti. Meanwhile the New Plymouth/Wellington Team took on the Queen Charlotte Yacht Club Team.
Both semi finals were hotly contested with some excellent boat handling skills in conditions that many of these sailors have not experienced before while sailing an Elliott 6.

Chris Jones commented that 'it was great to see such close racing in these difficult conditions at both extremes of the wind range, especially from sailors that aren’t regularly sailing these boats'.

After a titanic battle between New Plymouth & Queen Charlotte which saw multiple lead changes during the final leg of the final match before New Plymouth won by less than a boat length.

The final saw Christchurch/Wanganui battle it out against New Plymouth/Wellington in an ever increasing southerly breeze which saw plenty of action. While the weather was trying it’s hardest to make things difficult, a full finals series took place with Christchurch/Wanganui managing to secure the regatta with top quality boat handling skills.

Final results:
1. Christchurch/Wanganui (Daniel Philpot, Leyton Hern, Dylan Matthews & Johnny Matthews);
2. New Plymouth/Wgtn (Monique Towers, Emilie Waite, Olivia Christie, Ryan Corke);
3. Queen Charlotte (Callum Radford, Nick Gardiner, Seren Adams & Hamish Baxter);
4. Timaru/Kapiti (Hannah Corke, Sam Rushton, William Bennett & Brittney Calder).