Caughey rolls at Superboat opener
Armit wins memorial trophy
Canterbury Superboat racer Peter Caughey shook, rattled and rolled at the opening round of the Suzuki New Zealand Superboat series at Meremere in December.
The seven-time NZ Superboat champ was launching a much reworked monster motor and jet unit, and logged the fastest time of the day during the qualifying rounds with a 44.284-second lap.
But it all turned pear-shaped at the first elimination sprint. The boat was skimming the edge of the speedbowl at 120kph when it kissed the tyres, skipped the surface and re-entered as the water changed depth. Caughey corrected, but not enough and the boat took off, flew two metres in the air and rolled twice before landing – hard.
Fortunately both Caughey and his navigator, Shama Putaranui, were able to walk away from the crash, though she’s sporting a black eye. “She looks like she’s gone a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson,” says Caughey.
“We got fantastic service from the crash rescue crew and St John. It’s the first time in 26 years that I’ve had a roll, and we did it in spectacular style but the safety gear held up, the seats are great, we walked away from it.”
Laser Radial sailor Josh Armit won the Sir Peter Blake Memorial Trophy at the Torbay regatta late last year, beating nearly 400 sailors from 22 yacht clubs. The 14-year old summoned deep reserves of grit to push past sailors such as the very experienced Scott Leith (a four-times World Laser Masters Champion).
Josh’s performance wasn’t entirely unexpected. He has a long list of regatta victories to his name and has won every major Optimist fleet racing regatta, as well as every fleet racing regatta in the Starling this season (except for the first regatta – where he placed second).
Being 13 at the time, Josh is the youngest person to ever win the Starling Nationals, beating Dan Slater and Peter Burling’s record of age 14. At the recent Volvo Yachting Excellence Awards Josh was awarded the Youth Performance Award for outstanding achievement and jointly awarded the Aon Emerging Talent Award.