Representing the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, Samantha Osborne leads on Day One of the New Zealand Women’s Match Racing Championships 2013. Samantha Osborne, the second highest ranked skipper in the event with an ISAF Ranking of 95, enjoyed six wins in all of her six races, including a nail biting 1 second win over 2nd place holder Hannah Osborne (no connection).

Seven teams of New Zealand’s most talented female match racers are in the final stages of their preparation to compete in the New Zealand Women’s Match Racing Championships 2013 at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. Teams from the Buckland’s Beach Yacht Club, the New Zealand Multihull Yacht Club and five RNZYS teams, including two representing the Lion Foundation Youth Training Programme, will compete this week for the Leith Mossman Memorial Trophy.

Isaac McHardie and Micah Wilkinson have been selected to represent New Zealand in the SL16 at the 2013 ISAF Youth Sailing World Championships on from 13-20 July in Limmasol, Cyprus. Pairing up at the start of the season Isaac and Micah have gone from strength to strength demonstrating massive performance gains as they build their partnership, despite an injury set-back early in the summer when Micah broke his arm.

Since our last newsletter (early December) we have both been really busy. One of our aims in this post-Olympic year was to sail other high-performance boats as well as the 49er, with the aim of improving our skills. Lots of opportunities to do this have been coming our way and we have really enjoyed making the most of these. Blair sailed to Australia from Kerikeri in December and did his first Sydney – Hobart ocean race on Ray Hasler’s Rikki. It was pretty tough but it's good to have his first ocean race under his belt and it was a great experience.

If sailing an AC45 wasn't enough, FMJ Racing has been selected to compete in the Red Bull Youth America's Cup! It will be the first time that there has been an America's Cup for youth sailing teams after a vision from Russell Coutts and Jimmy Spithill, both Oracle team member defending the America's Cup.

Defending South Island Young 88 Champion, Milton Bloomfield, described last year’s contest as the toughest event he’d sailed in the last 10 years. This year’s event is expected to be just as competitive.

Leonard Takahashi-Fry, 2011 and 2012 Optimist National Champion, showed his class and a clean pair of heels to the rest of the 90 strong Optimist Open fleet at the Interislander Optimist Challenge Regatta in Picton over the weekend. With one race outside of the top 10, Leonard give the Fleet a lesson in consistancy to win by 23 points.

We have been getting back into the swing of things, and keeping rather busy! With sailing, cross training and all of the planning that has to go in at these early stages taking up a lot of our time…