New Zealand Laser Association

Quite a few NZL crews at the Coupe du Monde de Voile at Hyeres.
Regatta site results and reports at swc.ffvoile.com.
YNZ report for the NZL sailors.

NZL in the mens Laser

• Sam Meech had a great regatta to dinish 2nd just a few points behind the German sailor Philipp Buhl.
• Andy Malony finished 5th - coming home strongly with 2, 7, 2.
• Andrew Mackenzie 26th

In the Radials

• Sara Winther was 11th

In other clases

• Peter Burling and Blair Tuke had an other decisive win in the 49er - being 48 points ahead and unbeatable before the medal race.
• Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie were 4th on the 470
• Josh Junior 4th in the Finn and Andrew Murdoch 12th
• Alex Maloney and Molly Meech  were 9th in the 49erFX

We are part way through a busy round of Laser World Champs in Riviera Nayarit, Mexico.
Sailors report it is a beautiful sailing venue.

Womens Radial and Masters Radial are complete, with Mens Open and Masters Standard yet to come.

All results and and report at www.laserworlds2016.org.

For NZL sailors in the Women's Radial

• Sara Winther 11th, as she continues to push for an Olympic spot
• Susannah Pyatt 19th - she should be happy with her best worlds result to date.

In the Masters Radial

• Scott Leith won the apprentices again - with a fanatstic scoreline of 10 firsts and 2 seconds (which he could drop)

• Richard Blakey 2nd Master loved it over there. Masters and apprentices sailed in a combined fleet - which made things more interesting.
• Ed Tam 5th Master
• Don Christie 24th Master

• Hamish Atkinson 17th Grand Master
• Roger Winton 26th Grand Master
• Bruce Jones 32nd Grand Master

Andrew Maloney displayed great consistency to win the Trofeo S.A.R. Princesa Sofía, just 2 points ahead of sailing legnd Robert Scheidt.
Andrew McKenzie was a creditable 34th in the 152 boat fleet.

In the Radials Sussanah Pyatt was 30th and Sara Winther 32nd out of 84.

And Josh Junior won in the Finn.

• All results
• Photos & Video

Andrew's campaign update - Mixing it up in 2016, including a report on the NZ Nationals and European Champs.

The wind gods settled in with winds up to 8 knots from the East making for some highly tactical close racing. First start landed up as a general recall as boats charged over the line before the start gun but Garth Briden and Jock Bilger, our race officers gathered in the exuberant jockeys sending them gallivanting on their way with a successful restart. Four races were held in these moderate but tricky winds requiring a fair chunk of concentration to out manoeuvre the agile fleet. The winner for the day was Andrew Childs from Taipa Sailing Club in the Standard rig, he had travelled down 4 hours on the day to pick up the coveted trophy which he missed out on last year.  He was followed closely by Luke Deegan from SSANZ and David Giles from Weir Wood Sailing Club in the UK. The Radials was won by PLSC’s very own Kevin Welsh, Roger Winton from Onerahi Yacht Club was second and 3rd as well as 1st Junior Radial was Loic Eisenring from PLSC, with the Radial Women’s fleet taken out by PLSC’s Shaaron McKee.

• Results
• Photos

Super impressive to see 4 NZLs in the 10 top Lasers that sailed the medal race at the Miami Gold Cup.
And congratulations to Sam Meech who was the leading Kiwi into the final day before finishing 3rd in the race to jump to 3rd in the regatta.
Final results were;

• Sam Meech 3rd
• Thomas Saunders 7th
• Andy Maloney 9th
• Mike Bullot 10th

Also amazing to see Robert Scheidt win the regatta at 42 - more than twice the age of the impressive young Perth sailor Mathew Werne.

Results

Youtube Video of all medal races (Laser Standard race from about 2 hr 52 Min mark)

Stuff Article

http://www.impropercourse.com/2015/11/by-beyer-brett-is-current-master.html
and
http://www.impropercourse.com/2016/01/brett-beyers-personal-experience-w...

The 2015 North Harbour Masters was held at Lake Pupuke on 8 November, attracting a good fleet of 26 Masters; 20 Standard and 6 Radial and including several out of town visitors. The weather gods turned on a beautiful el nino spring day, fine and warm but unfortunately with a very light and variable westerly breeze. 

All Results

Pupuke is never easy but with the wind regularly shifting up to 45 degrees and many flat spots between the puffs everyone found it challenging and no one was able to consistently dominate, although the Pupuke fleet members showed out in the final results, indicating that maybe local knowledge counted for something, even though none of us could actually figure out what! In the standards there were 5 different winners in the 5 races while in the Radial 3 sailors scored bullets.
 
At the end of the day the final results in the Standards came down to a countback, with Nick Page (GM) coming out on top from Gary Lock (GM) by virtue of having managed a win in race 2. There was another tie for 3^rd and 4^th with Tony Nicholson (M) edging out club commodore John Dowsett (GM), again by virtue of securing a race win. Club stalwart John was extremely unlucky not to triumph having the best 3 race score for the day (2,2,3) but getting caught out by shifts in the other 2 races.  It was great to see Michelle Bain (WM) join the fleet as the start of her preparations for the 2017 World Master Games Laser event at Torbay and we hope to see many more new or returning faces through the season as we build towards the 2017 contest.
 
In the Radials it again took a tie break to determine the winner by the slimmest of margins, with Murray Bain  (M) only triumphing by virtue of a superior discard from Georgi Yankov (M), with both sailors counting 2 wins and 2 seconds. Third and leading Apprentice was Vladimir Minkov.
 
So another successful start to the seasons Masters regattas and we look forward to strong fleets at the upcoming SI champs at Charteris Bay, NI’s in Napier and Sir Peter Blake regatta at Torbay over the next few weeks.
 
Nick Page

• Sam Meech – 8th
• Mike Bullot – 10th
• Andy Maloney – 11th
• Sara Winther – 19th

Full Results

Sailors comments on yachtingnz.org.nz

Prepared for the NZLA AGM 20 Oct 2015
 
The Laser class has again led the way for dinghy sailing nationally with good fleets to many regattas across the country and we have again seen our sailors perform well at international level.
 
Internationally, while the court case with the licensee and builders remains unresolved it has been great to see the new Standard Rig sail released as of November and hopefully we will see progress on the other ongoing equipment issues, principally bending top and Radial bottom sections, shortly.
 
Congratulations to Scott Leith for landing another Radial World title. There were also many solid performances from our top Youth, Open and Masters sailors at international regattas.
 
Our grants and coaching initiatives has again continued and NZLA will continue to encourage and sponsor coaching this season for any club or group of Laser sailors. It is often difficult to find suitable slots where coaches are available and thanks to Mike Keeton for his continued perseverance in organising the class coaching.
 
The Nationals at Takapuna were a success with the total fleet of 150+ boats. We hope to see a continuation of the strong support from sailors at this seasons contest at Muritai.
 
This raises one of the issues currently facing NZLA. With the new ISAF world cup regatta format our top international sailors need to attend the ISAF Miami regatta in January 2016, meaning that they will be overseas and miss our Nationals. Your committee have discussed our options and agreed that for 2016 and 2017 we will continue with our Nationals in January as the advantages of these dates outweigh the disadvantages. However if the ISAF program remains unchanged we may need to consider a change, at least to the Open division Nationals, in the future.
 
The local initiative for women’s sailing and the special women’s regattas have continued this season with increasing participation and a special thanks to Chantal for her ongoing organisation of this program.
 
With the 2017 World Masters games Laser sailing at Torbay we are looking to attract additional Masters sailors to our fleets. The 2017 contest will be open entry and an ideal opportunity for Masters to join the class with a specific target in mind.
 
Financially we again enjoyed a satisfactory year and the association remains in good financial health.
 
A proposal was raised last year for NZLA to purchase boats for charter. After quite extensive investigation of the options we did not proceed with this as the potential costs and complications of owning, managing, storing and chartering boats were found to be just too difficult for an organisation of the nature of NZLA to commit too.
 
Karen Grimwade has again done a great job as our secretary. I again would like to thank all our committee for their input this year, particularly Mike Keeton who in the dual roles of Treasurer and Coaching Coordinator and Mike Knowsley for his ongoing work on our high quality and constantly evolving website. If anyone would like to join the committee or propose or discuss any Laser issue you are always welcome to contact me or any member of the committee via the NZLA website e mail contacts
 
Thanks and enjoy another season of challenges sailing a great little boat.
 
Nick Page -Chairman NZLA