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Turangi International Open 2005
Turangi
November 19/20
Sixteen sailors made the trip to Turangi this past weekend to compete in one of the longest running regattas of recent times. This was the fourth event of the OK Dinghy Summer Series, run by the Turangi Yacht Club.
Saturday saw the competitors on the beach for the first hour while the breeze built to 5-8 knots. The sun was out and in the 22+ deg temperatures, memories of the snow and what seemed like -20deg temperatures of last year quickly faded.
The regatta got off to a great start with five races been held in the first day. The racing was extremely close with almost every boat in the fleet having lead at some stage during the racing. Finishes were even closer with several positions being scored as ties, The race management team did a superb job separating the finishers which was no doubt a challenge when you have the entire fleet finishing within 15 seconds of each other!
The top performance of the day was Alistair Deaves who managed to sail consistently in the tricky conditions winning three of the races while the rest of fleet was up and down like yo-yo’s. Other good performances were shown by David Hoogenboom who won race two and Matt McDowell who won race five. Too much rum during the evening resulted in most of the sailors sleeping through their 3.30 alarms, and so missing another All Black win over the English.
Sunday saw an increasing breeze which peaked at about 18 knots, 3 races were sailed with Greg Wilcox wining the first and last race and Steve McDowell wining the second race of the day. Deaves again sailed consistently with a third, second, and seventh to take out the International Turangi Open for 2005 by a comfortable margin. Second, third and fourth overall went to Greg Wilcox, Steve McDowell and Karl Purdie respectively all from Wellington.
The results over the weekend have seen a tightening in the 2005 New Zealand ranking list after four regattas, Steve McDowell now has a two point lead over Mark Perrow but are being chased hard by Alistair Deaves and Greg Wilcox.
While the top five spots are held by Wellington and Auckland sailors, they will be no doubt be keeping their eyes on team Napier who have a mix of youth in Darren Hunt, and experience in Trent Pryce and Adrian Mannering. The Napier boys will be looking at a strong finish to the end of the series, and, with any one of them capable of an upset victory, the series is still alive.
While the top five have a jump over the rest of the top ten the upcoming nationals count for double points, add a further two more regattas as well as a drop into the equation and no doubt a few sailors will have their calculators out!
The next regatta is the New Plymouth Big Wave Classic in two weeks time. Hopefully we will see more of the enormous waves that we experienced last year and that the west coast is famous for!
- Alistair Deaves, Wakatere
- Greg Wilcox, Worser Bay
- Steve McDowell, Worser Bay
- Karl Purdie, Worser Bay
- Oscar Wilde, Wakatere
- Mark Perrow, Wakatere