NEW ZEALAND
The New Zealand racing scene has enjoyed a recent boost in numbers as recycled TP52s have found new homes and purpose in the local fleet. Poor resale value for these yachts in their home markets combined with a strong New Zealand dollar has made them an attractive proposition. Now a new 52 class is in the early stages of being organised with owners determined to build a flourishing event list where they can all gather and compete. This year’s Bay of Islands Sailing Week saw this group in action as the A Division. It comprised eight yachts, five of which were recycled TP52s. They span a broad design period from David Nathan’s much modified V5(now with canting keel), which began life as an Andrews design in 2001, to two 2011 versions. These are Temptation III, a Rolf Vrolijk design launched as Audi All4One and now owned by Annatole Masfen, and Viento II, also a Vrolijk design originally called Container and now owned by Connel McLaren. This is McLaren’s second TP52, having briefly owned the 2006 Judel-Vrolijk designed Glory(renamed Vamos). In between that age spread are Chris Hornell’s Kia Kaha, a 2005 Reichel-Pugh design originally built as Lexus for Doug DeVos, and Mayhem, Harry Dodson and Tony Bosnyak’s 2008 Judel-Vrolijk design originally built as Platoonfor Harm Muller-Spreer. The other three boats are Rob Bassett’s Bakewell-White 52, a canting-keeler with a more powerful rig, Jim Farmer’s Georgia, based on the Botín-Carkeek TP52 hull built for Emirates Team New Zealand but including a cruising interior and a bigger rig, and a Cookson 50 canting-keeler, Akatea, owned by Ross and Gary Lewis. A look at the results sheets from the Bay of Islands regatta shows a pretty democratic spread of results over the nine-race series. Under the local ‘General Handicap’, six boats had at least one bullet on their card and the remaining two had at least a second or third-place finish between them. Under PHRF the spread was the same. Line honours were dominated by Viento II, with four bullets, and Mayhemwith three, while Georgia and V5had one each. Only two of the eight yachts raced under IRC. ‘The racing is pretty close,’ says Harry Dodson. ‘When there were
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just three or four of these boats racing it was much easier for quicker boats to get around the slower boats and dominate the results. With more boats it is much harder to get past, so the results tend to be more evenly shared, which makes for better racing.’ Dodson says regardless of the age spread and various modifi- cations, the performance tends to even out over a series. The canting-keelers are allowed to swing their keels, which obviously helps if there is a lot of reaching, but is not much help with wind- ward-leeward tracks. Georgia’s interior furnishings are more or less compensated for by its bigger rig. ‘It is horses for courses.’ Now that the class is reaching critical mass the owners are working together to consolidate and improve. In particular they want to refine the handicapping. Initially, the thinking was to organise this internally, but following the Bay of Islands event discussions have opened with Yachting New Zealand.
Dodson concedes that the notion of an internal handicapper is fraught with potential difficulty. ‘The owners wanted to control the class destiny, but YNZ did a good job at the Bay of Islands Sailing Week, so maybe we should be working with them. We will debrief and get the owners’ input, but for obvious reasons it would probably be good to have an independent body doing it. ‘What is clear is that the owners would prefer a measurement handicap that is fixed. Most of the boats have had IRC certificates, so maybe that could be used as the basis with some adjustment based on performance.’
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The owners also intend to work together to ensure they co-ordinate their racing activities. ‘We can’t do all the races on offer. What is important is that we identify certain events and try to ensure that we all turn up for those,’ says Dodson. ‘The Bay of Islands is one, Auckland Regatta is another and then there are various club events. Long term it would be good to agree on a schedule of events for each season and declare a class champion at the end.’ Now in its 13th year, the Bay of Islands Sailing Week has turned into a summer fixture on the racing calendar. This year saw 87 yachts competing in eight divisions ranging from the 52-footers down to Tornado cats and non-spinnaker cruising boats.
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