New Zealand Laser Association

Big excitement as Sam Meech won the Bronze medal in the Laser in Rio.

It's hard to believe we haven't had one before. But very nice for Sam that 4 years of effort have paid off so nicely.

Sam's 10 prelim race results indicated how tricky the conditions could be in Rio
19, 3, 5, 6, 14, 17, 13, 6, 12, then 1st (nice)
That placed him 3rd going into the single medal race, where a cool head delivered a 4th in the race and the Bronze medal. WhooHoo! - in a nail biting kind of way.

NZ sailors in other clases;

• Blair Tuke and Pete Burling locked up the 49er Gold before the mdeal race - awesome.
• 49erFX girls - Alex Maloney and Molly Meech get Silver. They peaked at the right time with a fantastically sailed regatta.
• Womens 470 - Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie also get Silver. Filthy luck with a UFD and earlier lost protest put gold just beyond reach. But the points were so close they had to sail a very good medal race to get 2nd and not 5th.
• Gemma Jones and Jason Saunders were 4th just 3 points shy of a Bronze medal - an amazing result really.
• Finn sailor Josh Junior kept his cool to climb back to 7th overall after a patchy start to the regatta, then an impressive come back.
• Mens 470 - Daniel Wilcox and Paul Snow-Hansen were 10th - after a 6th in the medal race.

So all NZ sailors made their top 10 medal race. Which is amazing in itself.

Then 4 crews go on to win a medal, playing a big part in NZ's biggest every medal tally at one Olympics. What a credit to all the sailors, coaches and the whole YNZ Olympic program.

All Rio Sailing Results on Google

The 2016 Youth worlds are now in Auckland, from the 14th-20th December.

http://www.yachtingnz.org.nz/news/201605/auckland-confirmed-for-2016-youth-sailing-world-championships

At this stage there are 394 competitors, 77 coaches, 27 team leaders entered from 60 different countries. There will be 120 x Lasers Radials, 30 x 420s, 30 x 29ers, 20 x Nacra catamarans and 60 R:SX sail boards coming from all parts of the globe in 19x 40’shipping containers.

The forecast glorious weather but light winds eventuated, but if anything it made a holiday weekend in the EBOP more appealing.
A good fleet of 25 Lasers, as well as 6 Jolly boats, 5 Zephyrs and 10 Opti's were on the water.
Great to see 5 women Laser entries, all sailing full rig!

On Saturday the race committee did great to get 4 races in, and even if relatively short triangle or triangle + Windward-Leeward. Sailing in Ohiwa harbour gives plenty of tactical options playing with the tides and sandbanks.

Regular visitors from Panmure, Ian Wallace, Paul Page and Andrew Coffin again gave top locals Barry Cutfield, Ken Tarboton and Mark mackintosh a run for their money.

The club put on a wonderful buffet that evening, with some 60 people cosily filling the club house.

Sunday saw very light winds again in the morning, but threatened to die out. The first race got started for a scheduled triangle with some 2-5 knots of breeze from the east, against an outgoing tide of 1 to 3 knots from the west. Interesting sitting with transom to the start line running at 'full' speed just to hold position. After a very quick beat to the top mark the fleet went for a reach into a channel current to the wing mark, hugging the banks as much as anyone dared. Leading around the wing mark was Luuk Batenburg, trying to keep cool with Paul Page on his transom. Not far behind the rest of the fleet bunched up for some fun at the mark. The second reach had to cross two other channels with a dying breeze. Local knowledge saw Barry Cutfield sneak along the tidal lee of the middle bank to cut across the current well below the bottom mark, rounding it and finishing to win the regatta just before the breeze gave up, so no-one else could get around, let alone finish within the time limit.  Funniest race result ever with one 1st and 24 DNF's!

- Luuk Van Basten Batenburg

Photo - Hannah Morrison

Our NZL sailors at the 2016 Standard Masters worlds at Riviera Nayarit in Mexico.
Left to right: Rob Woodward, Nick Page, Tony Nicholson, Bob Blakey, Andrew Dellabarca, Gavin Dagley, Luke Carter, Garth Briden and Greg Simon.

Andrew holds his cube for 3rd in the Masters division.
Gavin won the Grand Master s sailing for AUS. But Nick noticed a NZ sticker on his boat somewhere and he is in our photo - which sort of makes it an NZL win.

Everyone was saying it was well run, a fantastic venue and the hardest competition they have sailed against.

Full Results