PredictWind Moth World Championship at Manly Sailing Club Day 3
by Suellen Hurling LiveSailDie & PredictWind 5 Jan 21:30 PST
4-9 January 2025
Day 3 - 2024 PredictWind Moth Worlds. Manly Sailing Club. January 6, 2025 © Suellen Hurling, Live Sail Die
After nine races across three days, the qualifying series for the PredictWind Moth World Championships is now complete, with the fleets heading into two days of finals racing from Wednesday 8th January at Manly Sailing Club in New Zealand.
Those nine races were intense, with conditions ranging from 10 knots to 25+ knots, creating carnage across both fleets and defining who made it into the gold fleet, and who resides in silver.
Mattias Coutts (NZL / Youth) has made his presence known, dominating his fleet and finishing the qualifying series on 11 points, with a seventh being his worst race, and subsequently, his drop. Coutts does have the hometown advantage with Manly Sailing Club being his local hangout and training base. At just 19 years of age, Coutts has a long future ahead of him, and there’s no doubt, no matter what happens in this event, that we will be seeing his name in lights in the years to come.
Jake Pye (NZL / Youth), who was the “unofficial” world champion after the Weymouth event back in 2023, goes into the finals on 16 points and in second place to Coutts. The 2023 Moth World Championship in Weymouth wasn’t able to be awarded with only two races completed due to a lack of wind. Pye won both those races and was cheered by his peers as the champion, however, his name was never engraved on the trophy. Now he’s up against his former training partner Coutts and is determined to take the top spot.
“Honestly, it’s just a honour to be here racing against the best sailors in the world! To be honest I’m in awe of the whole thing, and being able to race at home just tops it off. It’s awesome. Shout out to all the Manly Sailing Club volunteers - they rock!”
Richard Didham (USA / Open) rounds out the qualifying series in third place with 28 points, equal with Jack Bennett (NZL / Youth) who is technically fourth. Didham drops a DNC while Bennett’s worst score was a ninth.
The top-ranked master is John Harris (AUS / Master), who is mixing it up amongst the youth sailors sitting seventh overall.
Hattie Rogers (GBR / Open) leads the women’s division finishing 37th overall from a fleet of 66 racing entries.
The final day of the qualifying series saw a change in conditions with the breeze shifting from southwest to south meaning much flatter water conditions across both courses. Offshore the fleets saw gusts of 22 knots, but closer to land when heading upwind, they saw everything from 10-12 knots. The day has been described as “mint” by both race management and sailors alike.
Regarding the conditions, Diego Bottin (ESP / Open) said “I love the offshore strong breeze that we have been getting and I hope it lasts, but the forecast has it changing for the last day!”
Correct - south westerlies have dominated the conditions, and while the southerly came through today, for the final day of racing, the PredictWind forecast is showing a might lighter nor’easterly to wrap up the regatta.
Everyone gets a day off tomorrow to reset and recover (and conduct some much-needed repairs in some cases) before finals racing kicks into gear on Wednesday 8th January. Two days of finals racing will then determine who will be crowned the PredictWind Moth World Champion.
Full results available here.