Sailing regatta for youth

New Zealand’s brightest young sailors battled in the breeze last week for a shot at the world championships.

From October 12-15, Manly Sailing Club in north Auckland has played host to 77 Kiwi sailors - all hoping to secure a place in the NZL Sailing Foundation youth team.

Yachting New Zealand youth coordinator and event organiser Stuart Thomas says only 14 of the under 19 sailors would be selected to compete in the world championships to be held in Sanya, China, this December.

‘‘They have to prove they can go to the worlds, be competitive, and earn nation’s trophy points for New Zealand,’’ Thomas said.

‘‘They get a lot of support for going, so we need to make sure they’re fully committed to it.

‘‘With most of these kids - if they’re going to win their class - they’ve put a huge amount of work into getting there and have all sorts of aspirations in sailing.’’

Five classes of sailboat, including Nacra 15 catamarans, 29ers, Laser Radials, 420s and RS:X windsurfers, raced in the four day event.

‘‘With most of these kids - if they're going to win their class - they've put a huge amount of work into getting there’’

Stuart Thomas

Stuart says the Manly Sailing Club has been a fantastic venue, and ‘‘having the reserve area and the beach at low tide is just a dream’’.

Club commodore Sir Russell Coutts agrees, calling it ‘‘the perfect environment’’ for racing.

The Tindalls Bay resident came onboard as commodore in July, and has big plans for the club.

Four of the regatta’s 77 sailors represent Manly Sailing Club, including Coutts’ son Mattias, racing partner Matthew Rist, Sean Herbert and Harper Johnson.

Coutts says this is ‘‘just scratching the surface’’, as the club’s booming youth membership will see ‘‘strength in numbers’’ at future events.

‘‘We’ve had a lot of success with our youth programme, and we’ve now got more than 80 kids in our programme, where at the beginning of last year we had none,’’ Coutts said.

With another influx of young sailors expected after Christmas, Coutts hopes to grow numbers to over 300 within a few years.

Manly Sailing Club has been selected to host the O’pen Bic World Championships in 2019.

Visit manlysailingclub.org.nz for more.