2006 North Shore Champs, Auckland, New Zealand

Takapuna, 21/22 October

Report by Steve McDowell

The second regatta of the 2006 OK Dinghy Summer Series took place at Takapuna over Labour Weekend. A strong fleet was present with four sailors making the trip from Wellington and a further three from Napier, In total 17 boats.

Saturday saw three races sailed, in everything from 5-15 knots of breeze, very strong tide and even larger wind shifts. The first race had to be abandoned shortly after the start due to a 70° wind shift thirty seconds before the gun, and while the wind did settle, large shifts and pressure lines kept the fleet on there toes the whole day.

Alistair Deaves of Auckland got off to a flying start with two wins but couldn’t back this up in the third race with a 13th.  Interestingly, Deaves was not on top at the end of day one, as Wellingtonian Paul Rhodes finished with a 3,2,4 score card to have a handy lead. Third place was Steve McDowell also of Wellington with a 7,9,2 score card.

Results of most of the fleet were mixed with most being consistently “inconsistent”. The speed of the fleet is so close that the most people are capable of winning races. The third race of Saturday saw slightly more wind and Napier sailing legend Adrian Mannering showed his class to win easily. With a 12, 15, 1 score line however, Mannering was not in the hunt for the overall title.

Deaves commented on Saturday night:
“I was happy with my overall performance today. I had a bad start in the last race and got pinned out on the right hand side and just couldn’t get back. It’s not easy to pass any of the guys in this fleet as the level is so high and I could only get back to 13th.  Hopefully though, that will be my drop!”

Four races were scheduled for Sunday and again the breeze was between 5-12 knots. The up and down results of Saturday continued with Ben Morrision winning the first race and then fellow Aucklander Mark Orams winning races 5 and 6 before the last race of the day was won by Steve McDowell.

The action for the overall title was really between Saturdays’ leaders.  Deaves however, despite managing to continually improve throughout the day, with a 14,9,5,2 score card didn’t do enough to topple Rhodes, who, with a 9,4,7,4 score for Sunday, took out the title easily, and, without wining a race. Third place went to Andrew Pardington who is rapidly rising to the top of the fleet after a long lay off. He will be one to watch out for in upcoming events.

Rhodes commented on his regatta win ”The conditions were very tough all weekend, consistently picking the correct side was difficult so I took on a conservative approach, clean mid line starts and staying in touch with the majority of the fleet during the beats; not tactics to win a race, but enough for the title! The quality of this fleet gets better every year and there are too many ‘good guys’ to watch out for so you just have to sail your own race and let it unfold”