News

Prize Giving

[Your Name Here] — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:15:19 +0000

Coming up on the 18th of May. Drinks and nibbles start at 1730hr, then a guest speaker or two, then awarding the end of year trophies and club championship medals, then the dorsal fin award must find a new owner (celebrating some act or acts of supreme sailing stupidity), and finally socialising to continue till bed time. Be there or be square.

Closing Regatta

[Your Name Here] — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 10:19:27 +0000

Keen sailors, plenty of water in the lake, a lovely temperature outside, almost the perfect day really. It was just the absence of wind that spoiled it. Two races were held around a simple triangular course. The wind had half hearted attempts at filling in from the South, the Sou'west, sometimes East, and on occasion the the Nor'nor'west. It was one of those days when you could do really well by watching carefully where I was attempting to sail and avoiding that area all together.

There were some nice close finishes though. The Lasers had the biggest fleet with 7 boats. Blake seemed to be able to follow the wind around no matter where it led and cleaned up. Adam also did well keeping his Radial rig Laser well up the fleet. The Zephyrs saw the club secretary gain the upper hand over the club patron. Full results attached below.

Jason won the major spot prize, a pair of sailing boots, which I am sure will see a bit of use over the coming winter.

Closing Regatta

Points series

[Your Name Here] — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 23:11:38 +0000

Another drifter on Saturday 14th saw the Points series for this season completed. A combination of school holidays and overlaps with national regattas for Optimists and Starlings meant the fleet sizes were small. Those sailors present wrere treated to the cultured voice of John Elliott as he took on races officer duties. A very fine job he did, in trying circumstances.

The points series does not have any trophies associated with it but points scored count towards the aggregate cups. Attached is a file showing the points each sailor has accumulated from the points series. I will sort ot the aggregate scores next week. To do this the A, B, C, and Twilight races have to be added in an all scored using the high point scoring system (most points wins).

Points Series 2011-2012

Next week is the last sailing event of this season - the Closing Regatta. There may be a bit of stray noise from the car race over the hill. It would be great to see a big turnout of sailors. I hope the weather cooperates. Its got to cool down at some stage though, so have your wetsuits at the ready.

C Series

[Your Name Here] — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 06:59:13 +0000

The second half of our season has been notable for more wind than average for this time of year and some marginally unusual wind directions. This theme continued today with a NNW of around 12-15kt. The wind meant our Race Officer set out quite a tight triangular course using the western half of the lake. Overall the sailors seemed to enjoy zipping around the short triangular course. Racing was close in most of the fleets with many lead changes and opportunities to demonstrate boat on boat tactics. The on water activities were followed by a short prize giving and a delicious dinner with a Mexican flavour. Racing results below.

C Series results

There was no C2 race sailed. The best four races count to the final score.

Wed 21st March

[Your Name Here] — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 08:07:00 +0000

The official twilight races are finished but there is still enough light for some late afternoon sailing. One of the dragon boat teams will be doing some training so please look out for them. The dragon boats are somewhat bus like, they carry lots of people, they go quite fast, and need a fair bit of room to stop or change direction.

Nick and Haylee have organised a junior sailor 'night on the town' to follow the sailing. See the BroadReach for details or text Nick or Haylee.

C Series starts

[Your Name Here] — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 04:39:20 +0000

A dismal wind from a number of different directions meant there was a least one beat on each lap of the course but on exactly which leg it was anybody's guess. The RO took pity on the fleet and abandoned the second race so there was no club champs race sailed. Well sailed Adam Cameron who finished near the front of the Laser fleet across the line and was first on handicap. Adam found some useful channels of wind and somehow managed not to get tangled in the park ups at the downwind marks.

There is one more scheduled Club Champs race in two weeks time (24/3/12). Only the Laser fleet Club Champs result has been determined so far. The other fleets all have two or three skippers in with a chance.

To see the C1 result and Club Champs so far follow the links below.

C1 results.

Club Champs so far.

Twilight Results 2011-12

[Your Name Here] — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 06:09:59 +0000

Last Wednesday the last scheduled race (T14) of the Twilight Series was sailed. Only 1 race of the series was abandoned (T1) which means that 13 races contributed to the results. In the last Broadreach I noted that the Race Committee wanted to change from the best 10 races counting to a skippers final score to all races counting. Since then I have received a bit of feedback suggesting that it is not really fair changing the scoring system part way through the series. In the circumstances the right thing to do is to go back to the original scoring system i.e. 10 best races count, therefore each skipper gets to discard their three worst scores.

Since I had to generate the results using all 13 races initially I thought it would be interesting to see how the results would have changed if all races were counted rather than just the best 10. The link below is to a table showing the scores of the top three skippers in each fleet. One column shows the results if all races were counted, one column if the 10 best races were counted. The extra two columns show the points difference between first and second place. No one changed position by changing how the series was scored but the points difference between the 1st and 2nd place did change, increasing for some fleets and decreasing for others.

Twilight Series top three in each fleet

Overall the differences between the two ways of scoring are small. For nest season the Race Committee will have another lookat how to score the Twilights Series. We are considering having two Twilight Series one before Xmas and one after.

HYC Facebook page

[Your Name Here] — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 08:11:13 +0000

HYC now has a Facebook page. Follow the link below or go to the Links page of the website.

HYC Sailing

Burnsco HYC Regatta

[Your Name Here] — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 04:29:49 +0000

Mostly Lake Rotoroa is a light wind venue but not when an intense low passes over the lower North Island. Luckily we were spared the worst this weather system had to offer and we just had to cope with strong blustery westerlies and a smattering of rain. Many sailors achieved personal bests in the speed department, others personal bests in the speed bailing department, and others in the roll the boat to windward while going a zillion miles an hour department.

Fortunately our race officer of the day gave us all the perfect excuse for a capsize with his suggestion that when a really nasty squall comes through sometimes it is best to deliberately capsize the boat and wait for the worst of the wind and rain to pass over before righting the boat and carrying on sailing. Clearly I am a good listener and have an eye for the squalls because I took his advice approximately 10 times on Saturday.

Sunday brought winds a peg or two down on the scale but still enough to have the boats planing quickly on the reaches.

Many thanks to our sponsor for the event, Burnsco Marine and Leisure, and to the team of people working on shore and on Patrol Boats who made the event possible.

The P Class fleet deserves special mention due to the skippers' ability to keep their boats upright in the gusty conditions. I am sure if we had had the same winds last year our patrol boat crews would have had more work to do rescuing upside down P Class boats. A season of regular sailing and away regattas up in Auckland and in Tauranga have really lifted the whole fleets skills. Two Optimist Green fleeters had a go at a few of the races, between them starting 5 races and finishing 3. Excellent effort Sara and Dan.

Congratulations to the winners of the fleets - Miily McHardie (P Class), Nick Oxborrow (Starling), Rob Ebert (Zephyr), Duncan White (Laser), and Jonathan Consistency McMullan (3.7). Full results below.

Burnsco HYC Regatta 2012

Burgess changes hands

[Your Name Here] — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 09:44:57 +0000

Congratulations to the Hillcrest High School Team, clear winners in the interschool Burgess Trophy Regatta. This annual event is organised by the Waikato Thames Yachting Association and John Elliott in his presidential capacity did a fine job of encouraging schools to enter with 35 sailors representing 11 different schools taking the opportunity to get out of the classroom.

The weather cooperated. A pleasant westerly breeze filled in midmorning and the three scheduloed races were all completed. Unfortunately for the slower boats the wind died away towards the end of the last race so that a few of the optimists had to be scored DNF (did not finish), even though the boats sailed the course correctly. The boats crossed the line more than 20minutes after the first Optimist to finish (go Brodie M). Another rule to catch a few people out was the old 'do not recross the finish line after finishing trick' leading to a couple of DSQ results.

Dave Smith as Race Officer did a fine job with the courses. A goodly number of other HYC members and their families contributed to the smooth running of the event. It was an interesting challenge to handicap the open fleet to allow even racing between such different boats (one Farr 3.7, two Topaz Race, two Phase 2, three P Class). The NOR (notice of race) stated 5 boats of the same class were needed for a fleet, so these boat classes were combined to form the open fleet. The P Class sailed with a handicap 28 compared to the 3.7 class on a zero handicap i.e. the P Class was expected to be 28% slower around the course. The 28% worked out quite well but ideally we would have had a fleet of P Class boats. It was a pleasure to see that the biggest fleet were the Optimists with 14 boats. This bodes well for future events. It is always an advantage to have a big team because all the sailors contribute to the teams points and the most points wins. However to win the event you have to have both a big team and lots of good individual performances. Follow the link below to see just how good Hillcrest was.

At the prizegiving Micah Wilkinson, captain of the Cambridge High School team, last years winners, graciously handed the trophy over to Haylee Hunter, captain (and motivator) of the Hillcrest High School team.

I made a small error when swapping the results from the race scoring program on to an Excel spreadsheet so the published totals are a little different from those read out on the day. The changes do not alter any of the overall rankings between the schools. When you look at the results a score of 1 point means the sailor either did not finish or was disqualified, and a score of 0 points means they did not compete in that race.

Burgess Results 2012 (the results are organised by school but the rankings in the left most column are each sailors within fleet placing)