Issue date
The week of the 24th to the 28th March marked the 10th anniversary of this regatta and the first one held since the tragic death of the founder and principal organiser of the regatta, Allan Garbutt, in June last year.
Overall top performing crew were: Dylan Edwards (skipper) and George Early (crew) and once again Otago Boys’ High School took out top honours as overall top school.
Dylan and George (pictured above) have been competing against each other in the Optimists for a few seasons now and are also starting to try their hand in the Starling class. Dylan represented the Southern Region in the Starling Match Racing Championships this season. Both young sailors are regular competitors in the Otago Optimist Summer Series which was won overall by Dylan with George coming in second.
The Otago Boys’ High School team is very much headed by Ted Brown who notched up a fifth year of competing in this regatta having sailed every year whilst at High School. When Ted isn’t sailing in the School Sunburst team he is a regular competitor in the 29er class based out of the Ravensbourne Boating Club.
Top female crew this year was a Bayfield High School combination of Shanna Verhoef (skipper) and Emma Fleury (crew) - pictured inaction below. They also finished 4th overall in the regatta, a result which reflected one bad race which unfortunately you don’t get to drop in this event.
This year the event followed the same format of previous years, being hosted at the Otago Yacht Club in the Upper Otago Harbour. Terry Waterhouse from the Ravensbourne Boating Club has stepped in as the Contest Organising Chairman and has pulled together all the familiar faces from previous years. The Principal Race Officer was again Allan, Butch, Todd; also from the Ravensbourne Boating Club.
The regatta saw 21 boats entered representing a total of 8 different High Schools. 10 sailors came down from Oamaru (pictured below), representing both Waitaki Boys’ High School & Waitaki Girls’ High School. A team from Wanaka representing Mount Aspiring College made their debut entry into this competition.
Numbers for this regatta hover around the 21 to 27 fleet number with teams having come from as far afield as Asbhurton, Te Anau and Invercargill.
This event is based on fleet sailing over a variety of courses to determine an overall winner, but it is very much a school event and close rivalry is evident between the different school teams. An overall winning school is a very sort after title with Otago Boys’ High School having dominated this place for a few years now.
The feature of this Regatta is the retired age group of sailors and who readily devote their time to this week ensuring the success of the regatta and who are ready to pass on plenty of good advice to the competing younger sailors. This is usually done at a daily briefing that Race Officer, ‘Butch’ Todd, conducts and goes over any problems that the sailors may have had the previous day along with a few pointers on boat handling, sail trim and a brush up on the rules. Assisting Butch this year with plenty of good sailing tips was recently retired Peter Nees. Peter was National Champion in the International Moth Class during the years, 1988, 89 & 90 and latterly has been a regular competitor in the Sunburst. For the competitors that are still learning the necessary skills to get around the race track quicker this week proves to be invaluable in lifting both their competency and confidence.
This year Otago again turned on a variety of conditions ranging from light breezes through to the top end of being marginal and challenging. Most competitors managed most races with damage to boats being markedly less this year.
The large team from Oamaru which built upon the knowledge and confidence they gained last year certainly showed that the effort that the North Otago Yacht & PBC are putting into their Junior learn to sail classes on Thursday evenings is paying off. This is lead by Graeme Thorn, Kevin Murdoch, Alaistair Sime and backed up by some very supportive parents and older club members.
The event is Supported by Port Otago Ltd who along with other minor supporters see the benefit of assisting in this event and have indicated that they wish to continue to do so provide a focus of school sailing in the area each year.”
See the full results by clicking the file links just below.
