Issue date
The East Auckland Opti & Starling Series is an inter-club series between Howick Sailing Club, Glendowie Boating Club, Bucklands Beach Yacht Club and Maraetai Sailing Club. Each Club is hosting a leg of the series over the 2014/15 season with the first leg having sailed at Howick Sailing Club last Sunday 19th October. The series is designed to help develop junior sailing in the East Auckland area and provide friendly competition between the Clubs.
Howick Sailing Club put on the sunshine, steady winds and clean waves for the first stage of the series. There were 35 juniors sailors competing across 3 fleets – Starlings, Opti Open and Opti Green fleet. The Opti fleets managed 3 races each and the Starlings snuck in a 4th race before racing was completed for the day.
Sixteen sailors competed in the Opti Greens with Jack Webber from Glendowie winning each of the 3 races. Luke Robinson and Sean Patten both from BBYC were the runners up in the Green fleet. It was great to see so many development sailors fresh out of learn to sail racing on the day. The Green fleet in this series is intended for development sailors with the experienced Green fleet sailors being encouraged to enter into the Open fleet competition.
A further eleven sailors sailed in the Open fleet with Braydon Bertelsen from BBYC taking out first place, Jack Frewin from Howick and Callum McRea from Maraetai placing. It was a very close race for 3rd place with only 1 point separating Callum and Peter Eaglen from Howick in 4th position.
The Starling fleet comprised of eight sailors from Glendowie and Maraetai. Some very tight racing with a number of different sailors finishing in the top 3 across the four races. Top 3 places for the day were Nick Reid and Matt Connolly from Glendowie and Jack Culloty from Maraetai.
The Clubs are competing for the Ivan Raos memorial centreboard trophy kindly donated by The Antique Shop in Howick. Ivan was the Commodore at Howick Sailing Club between 1999 and 2002 who sadly passed away earlier this year.
The Howick Leg was won by BBYC taking first points in the series. They will be defending their position when they host the next leg of the series on the 16th November.
Howick Sailing Club would like to thank the following entities for supporting on the day with spot prizes for the sailors – Marie Raos from Ray White, NZSailing.net, Kiwi Yachting, North Sails, The Water Shed and Doyle Sails. Thank you for supporting junior sailing in the Auckland area!
Results are in the pdf files below.
