News

As Princess Sofia Regatta shifts from opening to finals racing New Zealand is still at the top of the Finn, 49er and Women’s 470 leader-boards...

The Harbour Access Trust has applied for resource consent to establish a Community Marine Activity Hub, located at the Northern end of Takapuna Beach. The resource consent application has now been officially notified to the public and Auckland Council must receive no later than 5pm on Monday 13th April, 2015. I urge you to submit now in support of the project which would see the Takapuna Beach Reserve transformed for the benefit of the community and I encourage you to share this with friends, family and colleagues.

Applications are now open for the 2015 St John’s Rotary Trust Scholarship with two $1000 scholarships up for grabs for up and coming youth sailors.

Josh Junior (NZL) takes the lead at the Trofeo S.A.R. Princesa Sofia Iberostar in Palma after being one of the few sailors to achieve any sort of consistency on the second day’s racing. Jonathan Lobert (FRA) drops to second on equal points, while Tapio Nirkko (FIN) remains in third with no race position better than seventh. Race wins went to Oliver Tweddell (AUS) and Junior.

It was a long day in Palma with the late coming sea breeze delaying racing. Patience paid off and the second day in the Trofeo Sofia IBEROSTAR provided great racing and allowed to complete the qualification stage. A seventh race was completed for the kites who will go into medal race mode on Wednesday.

The wind played dirty tricks all day in Palma on sailors and race committees who had to juggle with big shifts and different pressure. From 4 to 20 knots, and reaching 40 in some gusts, the wind turned around the bay playing with everybody's nerves! However, the show was on with the bay covered with white caps and the 800 boats that raced their first day in the event.

So where to begin? After our Miami trip in January, we had a good month and a half at home, getting in lots of off the water training (or in Jo’s case – also some on the water paddle-board training), lots of meetings and planning, making sure we are on track and organised – this is a rather big year for us with over two hundred days overseas. We even managed to fit in a little sailing – at the NZ 470 Nationals and Oceanbridge Sail Auckland, where we had some rather fun battles with the New Zealand boys, Paul and Dan, it was a case of match racing from 3 min to go every single start – awesome fun!!

New Zealand’s largest single-class regatta, the 2015 Toyota Optimist National Championships, starts at Worser Bay on Easter Friday. Over 200 sailors from four countries will compete in 14 races over five days of racing. Familes will be bringing dinghies from as far away as the Bay of Islands in the north and Dunedin in the south. Others have chartered boats from our sponsors, SailOne and Force Racing.

Over 1.200 sailors from 65 countries are in Palma de Mallorca to compete in the 46th edition of the Trofeo Princesa Sofia IBEROSTAR. This international regatta has become a regular feature for worldwide sailors who will race in the 10 Olympic events, the Formula Kite, the Dragon and the 2.4 Paralympic class, from the 28th of March until de 4th of April in the beautiful bay of Palma.