Legendary Northland sailing coach Derry Godbert and Olympic sailors Blair Tuke and Andrew Murdoch are among the Northlanders in the running for Yachting New Zealand's top award. Yachting NZ announced its 2012 performance, service, emerging talent and cruising award winners this week as well as a short list of finalists for the Young Sailor of the Year and Coach/Official of the Year.

Emirates Team New Zealand is ratcheting up its AC72 sailing programme, moving on from primarily conducting reliability and system testing to a focus on racing and speed development. The yacht will go into the shed for 10 days for, amongst other things, modifications that are designed to extract greater performance from the boat.

In association with the French Markets, French Bay Yacht Club in Titirangi is hosting a Try Sailing Day on Sunday 11 November. 

Come down to:

Coach Rod Davis blogs on how the big cat sends a shiver down the spine of even a hardened offshore sailor….. As things stand now, it’s intimidating, standing 40 metres tall and weighing less than 6000 kilos. The power and potential “doomsday scenarios” of the new AC72 can send a shiver down even the most hardened round-the-world sailor’s back. That will diminish with the new cat’s every outing.

Yachting New Zealand is sad to learn of the passing of Life Member Harry Julian who passed away on October 27, 2012, at home.

The ISAF Annual Conference being held on 1st -11th November in Ireland will hold special interest for supporters of windsurfing and kite boarding, with the ISAF Council to decide whether the decision on Kite-Board Racing’s inclusion in the 2016 Olympic Games is to be re-visited. The ISAF Council is the decision making body of ISAF and is made up of representatives elected by groups of countries, known as Areas. Each country in the Area has one vote in determining matters before Council.

Queen Charlotte Yacht Club's first High Performance Clinic of the season finished up with a lot of very tired but enthusiastic Optimist and Starling sailors. Club Junior Convenor and Coaching Co-ordinator, Ben Cowley, pronounced the weekend clinic as a great success and said the young sailors were very keen for the next one; “their skills have improved dramatically.”

Previously the IACA Committee Liberty Class Representative, New Zealander Brendan Tourelle has taken on the role of President. In this article, get to know Brendan and everything he brings to the class.

The Gulf Harbour Yacht Club will begin a Youth/Young person’s Keelboat Programme in February next 2013. Find out more here. The programme will provide tuition aboard International Farr Platu 25 Keelboats followed by Fleet and Match Racing as part of the club's own race schedule. Looking forward, further interclub Youth Match Racing will be sought plus interclub and International Class Fleet Racing also.

The 2012 A Class Catamaran World Champion is Mischa Heemskerk from the Netherlands. While only five races could be sailed as conditions steadily deteriorated with the impending arrival of Hurricane Sandy this week, Mischa was clearly dominant in the strong wind conditions. The kiwi team made this event possibly one of our most successful worlds ever... three boats in the top ten; Murray Philpott 5th, Mike Drummond 6th and Allan Coutts 8th. Big thumbs up for Murray Philpott, now Grand Master World Champion and Blair Tuke 19th now Junior World Champion.