The 2014 A Class worlds kicked off on Monday with the practice race, the event drawing a record fleet of eighty one entries from twelve nations.

The Lake Mahinapua Aquatic Club is gearing up to take part in the National Volvo Sailing and Boating Day this Sunday. It follows the club’s successful annual regatta two weeks ago. The day is a celebration of sailing and boating and clubs from all over New Zealand are taking part.

It all started in a distant land renowned for it’s sand and desert, rather than for it’s water, and ended up with a coincidence that still makes me think how very small the world really is. In 1978, I was working in Jubail, on the north-east coast of Saudi Arabia. A real experience, but at times quite boring with not many of the usual “outlets” that we’re all used to enjoying at home.

The 2014 SSANZ Two Handed Round North Island Race (RNI) supported by NZL Yachting Trust got away to a perfect start at 2pm on Saturday 8th February. Sun was shining, 15-20knots of breeze and an easy lay up the coast. As the team on Wedgetail put it during their first radio sked "20 kt reach and sunshine. Exactly what was in the brochure” Crew’s were kept busy with sail changes between jib’s, code zero’s and gennakers and the boats were making good speed up the coast.

Results from the 2014 Finn National Championship held at Maraetai Sailing Club in February.

Results for 2014 New Zealand Zephyr National Championship held at Naval Point Club Lyttelton in February.

Yachting New Zealand and Zhik have formally teamed up to give New Zealand’s best sailors access to world class technical wet gear and clothing. Zhik, the Australian based watersports brand, will be supplying the NZL Sailing team athletes and coaches with on water gear and shore uniform through until Rio 2016 as Yachting New Zealand’s Official Technical Clothing Partner

The Finn class is pleased to announce that it has launched a new website after successfully porting its existing site onto a new platform and to a new server. The address remains, as always, www.finnclass.org. The whole site has been reworked onto the new platform and should be faster, more reliable and more secure.

We got straight back into work mode in early Jan with the arrival of our newest boat – named Grover, which will most likely to be the boat we use in Rio in 2016… We are shipping it to Rio later this year and it will live there for the next two and a half years as our training boat and hopefully eventually our Olympic boat!

It was great to be joined by an additional group of foreigners’ straight after our Nationals finished, to up the quality and intensity of our training and summer racing even more. Joining our local talent, the Duchies and Omanis who were already here, were sailors from Australia, Sweden, Ireland, Norway, Singapore and Korea. It has given us some competitive racing both in training, at Oceanbridge Sail Auckland and during the OKI 24 Hour Race this past weekend.