Members Slot
Most members of the club will be aware that I am a member of the RNZYS and as Mike Allison noted I attended the club’s recent 150th anniversary bash with the resultant consequences.While I have an interest in one of the MRXs that are berthed outside the RNZYS Rooms my main focus these days is race management. I am a national race officer which means I can run international, regional and club events in Auckland and elsewhere. Through the winter I and team of 7 volunteers run two of six windward leeward race days.
In this report I had hoped to tell you of my weekends on-water activities which was intended to be a report on the windward leeward races I and my team were scheduled to run last weekend for the RNZYS. That hope was dashed by the wind gods deciding to turn their backs on us by failing to provide any wind that we could use. That’s sailing.
That didn’t mean the yachts scheduled to do windward leewards missed out as we had a plan B. Rather than sending the yachts back to the marina we folded them back into the harbour racing also scheduled for last Saturday.My team watched a couple of starts and then we returned to the dock to put the boats and gear away.
This is the second time that a windward leeward event I have been scheduled to run have not been run. The first event was blown off the water by a fresh to frightening squall that came through and for the second the wind strength in the racing area wouldn’t have been sufficient to blow out a candle. It is annoying but that as I have said is sailing.
The only pluses I can think of is that the fleets scheduled for windward leewards actually got some racing in and we didn’t have wet gear or boats to put away.