WTYA Regatta Report

Lake Rotoroa provided contrasting conditions over the two days with strong sou'westerlies on Friday testing the skippers strength and control in survival mode conditions, and light and variable conditions testing their mental agility on the Saturday. Needless to say I struggled on both days. Our local numbers were bolstered by sailors from Ngaroto, Rotorua, and Panmure Lagoon. The Laser fleet had the most boats on the water (13 Standard, 3 Radial, 3 Four point seven rigs).

HYC turned on the hospitality with the kitchen crew providing lunches and a dinner on Friday for all the sailors and supporters. The team in the tower (Brokey and Hutcho) did a fine job with the courses. The regatta was notable for an absence of boat starts. Unfortunately the visiting skippers seemed to adapt well to the HYC tower start and the locals did not seem to have any advantage. Thanks to the commodore for leading the rescue boat team. They had a bit of heat on the Friday, but probably less than might have been predicted. Most skippers were able to avoid getting their masts stuck in the mud and there were few breakages.

There were some nice match ups across the fleets but probably the most intense battle was in the small Laser Radial fleet. Werner and Jason enjoyed 6 match races with a whole pile of other boats to play cat and mouse around. Victory to the young gun. Meanwhile in the Standard rig Arthur F weathered the storm on Friday and then enjoyed his relative lack of kilograms on Saturday to come out on top. Annie and Julia had a good battle in the Starlings with Julia winning and Charlotte sneaking into third on count back. Rob won a tight tussle with Jack in the Zephyrs, John E won the 3.7, Lochie M first in the P Class, and Lucas H first in the Optimist. Looking through the results the race wins were shared around and final scores were very close. A few more boats to fill out some of the fleets would have been ideal but all in all a fine regatta.

WTYA 2015 Regatta results

(apologies to Blake, I have not corrected his DSQ result. In fact he should probably be given an extra reward for reminding half the Laser fleet to put the yellow mark to starboard)

WTYA Regatta

HYC is hosting the Waikato-Thames Yachting Assn Regatta this coming Friday and Saturday, Feb 6,7.

See the link for the NOR https://www.clubhubssl.com/rss/HYC/file/Rob_Ebert-WTYA_NoR_2015.docx

Winners are Grinners

Hamilton Yacht Club Special Event
Winners are Grinners Book Launch
Friday, December 12th at 1730hrs

Jimmy, family, and friends put on a great show. Sales of the book were healthy and Jimmy was kept busy signing the inside covers. As you can see it was thirsty work. His book is available via the website below.

http://www.jimmygilpin.co.nz/

A1/A2 and CC1

An 8-12 knot breeze (mostly) from the West sped 30 or so skippers around the lake in a pretty standard course for the opening A Series and Club Champ races.

Across all fleets, the racing was close and generally only 1-2 points separated the handicap placings. This is particularly true of the Laser fleet, only 2 points separated the 1st through 4th place getters. In the Zephyr fleet, Rob Ebert dominated taking both guns. The net result may have been different for the Zephyrs if one sailor didn’t swim part of the first race. Must be the boat. In the Starling fleet Julia and Annie shared the handicap honours with Charlotte and Lucia close behind. In the Opti Green fleet, Serena Dan Hertog seems to be the form Skipper. It was pleasing to see a couple of additional Opti Green sailors and I’m hopeful this group will be joined by further sailors from the Learn to Sail program soon.

From the results, minor handicap adjustments have been made for coming events. These will be reassessed throughout the season. Any correspondence about handicaps should be made with the Racing Secretary and be accompanied by the required cash or cheque payment (just kidding!).

Sprints Series 1

My thanks to those keen sailors that lined up for the third race. The promised Sou'wester never showed up and we were left with a pathetic SSE trading places with an underwhelming WSW, and patches of nothing. A couple of the older members tried to trick the wind gods into action. John Elliott went ashore and dropped the sail of his 3.7, and Jim Brokenshire made an announcement over the loudspeakers at 1600hr to say that the bar was open. Sadly the wind gods were not taken in by these ploys and they waited till 1800hr before realeasing a pleasantly consistent Sou'wester across the lake. The laws of averages say we must get a decent wind sometime soon (they also say that forecasting is an inexact science).