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2014 Lidgard Sails Evans Bay Regatta


Rowdy

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2014 Lidgard Sails Evans Bay Regatta – The Preview

 

This weekend sees the 2014 Lidgard Sails Regatta taking place at the Evans Bay Yacht and Motor Boat Club in Wellington.

 

With the regatta incorporating the Wellington Trailer Yacht Championships, the Javelin North Islands and the Hartley 16 Traveller Series a big turn out is expected for racing on the waters of Evans Bay.

 

The Lidgard Sails Regatta is the last in a series of events hosted by Evans Bay over the past couple months including the Flying Dutchman Nationals, the Javelin Nationals, the Lower North Island Secondary Schools Teams Racing Champs, the 420 Nationals and Youth Worlds Selection Trials, as well as the annual East West Dash!

 

Division One of the Wellington Trailer Yacht Championships is expected to be dominated by Elliott boats, with a strong group of 5.9s expected to make the trip down from Plimmerton and even the potential of two travelling from New Plymouth. There are also rumours that local Elliott 780 Erazer may even make an appearance following many years terrorising the Wellington Keelboat fleet and a small break in Auckland for cruising.

 

Division Two will see the local fleet of Gazelles lead by multiple National Champion Daryl McGee on Black Mamba taking on the Club Vice Commodore Mike Dunlop in his Williams 7 Liquid Asset and the local Nolex 25 fleet including Big Brumus and Challenger. A posse of Nolex 22s are also expected to be travelling from Plimmerton, so a strong and very competitive division is expected to be on the starting line.

 

The Division Three favourite is local Farr 6000 Farrouche skippered by Colin Lee, however the remaining podium places are wide open with only 2 points separating the rest of the club fleet for their season championship the racing will be tight.

 

The Javelin fleet is expected to be heavily packed by local boats with Thirty Something sailed by Wade McGee and Damien Dixon looking like favourites to take out the regatta. The Javelin fleet has been through a resurgence at Evans Bay recently so it will be great to see the fleet out competing in the annual regatta.

 

The Hartley 16 fleet is expected to include at least a dozen boats and will see some fierce one design racing where not an inch will be given either on the water or on the way to the bar. With boats travelling from as far away as Napier and New Plymouth, local boat Bender with Paul Davies on the helm will have his work cut out! Expect to see a Holdt on one of the podium steps in this fleet, if not on all three steps.

 

Other fleets expected to be strong this weekend include the Paper Tigers, while this regatta is not part of their traveller series they are still hoping for between 15 and 20 boats to be on the start line. Racing will be highly competitive with 8 of the fleet being past or present New Zealand Paper Tiger Team members. The fleet will also include two NZ Women’s National Champions, both the current and immediate past champion. Mike Hood and Peter Robins are favourites and will be hard to separate after finishing only one point apart at the Nationals.

 

For anyone interested in racing this weekend, entries are still open! Registration is from 8.30 to 9.30 Saturday morning with the Race One start scheduled for 1100hrs.

 

Racing is expected to take place within the confines of Evans Bay, which will allow for fantastic spectator viewing from Evans Bay Parade. So get out there and check out what is happening.

 

Further details of the 2014 Lidgard Sails Evans Bay Regatta can be found on the club website at http://www.ebymbc.org.nz. Results will also be posted as they become available.

Black Mamba.jpg

VC Mike Dunlop - Liquid Asset.jpg

Bender - Paul Davies.jpg

Jav in action.jpg

The Package - Mike Hood.jpg

Typical Evans Bay Day.jpg

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2014 Lidgard Sails Evans Bay Regatta – Wrap Up

 

What a weekend it was, the weather played the game and Evans Bay provided a full range of fantastic sailing conditions from no wind and beautiful sunshine (you can’t beat Wellington on a good day) through to a (more normal) cool 20ish knots on Sunday.

 

A total of 63 boats made the most of the weather and the 2014 Lidgard Sails Evans Bay Regatta was a great event, which saw the Bay full of sails in the same way the old salts always talk about it looking in “the good old days”.

 

Great racing was had by all fleets with a few notable points to happen:

 

• There were 24 visiting boats from a range of clubs including Muritai (6); Wanganui (4); Plimmerton (3); New Plymouth (3); Amokura Sea Scouts (2); Worser Bay (2) Napier (1); Horowhenua (1); Lowry Bay (1); & Taupo (1). A huge thanks to all those who travelled and made the weekend so memorable!

 

• Racing was incredibly competitive throughout every fleet, with the Paper Tiger results coming down to the final lap of the final race and the Hartley 16 result being decided in the final 50 metres of the final beat.

 

• Elliot 5.9 Seaview Sails managed to win the Division 1 Wellington Trailer Yacht Champs despite throwing their mainsheet hand over the side in the final beat of the last race.

 

• The Hartley 16 podium reads Wayne Holdt 1st, Jason, Holdt 2nd and Alan Holdt 3rd. I would suggest if you want to do well in this class and your name isn’t Holdt, you probably need to either change class or your name!

 

Full results can be found on http://ebymbc.org.nz/results2013.shtml.

 

A huge thanks to Lidgard Sails for their sponsorship of this event which included a $1,000 sail voucher as the major spot prize.

 

Also thanks to PRO Mike Appleyard, Nicki Johnson who gave up her weekends sailing to compile the results and all the other volunteers who gave up their time so that we as sailors could enjoy ourselves out on the water (and in the club afterwards!).

 

The boring stuff:

Saturday started with a very gentle (and very warm for Wellington) Northerly as racing got underway on time, unfortunately with a South Easterly forecast for the afternoon there was always the chance the northerly would drop out. And this is exactly what happened. The Paper Tiger and Trailer Yacht fleets managed to get a race in but unfortunately the centreboard, Hartley 16 and Javelin fleets missed the time limit.

 

After a small wait in conditions that every Wellingtonian dreams of (warm sunshine and no wind) a little southerly started to puff in and racing was underway again in a beautiful 8-12 knot breeze with just enough shiftyness to make racing interesting. Another three races were completed for each fleet and everyone was off the water after a long around 5pm. The race committee must have been making the most of the last day of daylight saving for the season!

 

Sunday dawned overcast with the threat of drizzle and a 15 to 20 knots which was rock solid from the south. The race committee again got things away bang on time and three races were completely by all classes before a couple of catch up races for those who missed the time limits on day one.

 

The racing was all over, everyone was packed up and prize giving held at 3.30pm.

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Haha...

It was a lucky break, it was Hoody's regatta really!

If he hadn't lost count of how many laps he had done he would have won the last race and the regatta on count back.

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The photos above are from previously days, not sure if there are any photos from the weekend, I haven't seen any.

However I do seem to remember a camera being pointed in my finish coming into the finish Saturday afternoon.

If I do hear of any I'll let you know.

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