Friday 15 April 2011

Waka Racing to Compete in Young 88 NZ Nationals


Congestion at the windward mark in the Young 88 NZ Nationals 2008. Image copyright Y88 Association.

by Waka Racing media

Rick Hackett, General Manager of leading edge marine hardware company KZ Marine has kindly offered Waka Racing the use of his Young 88 for the National Championships this weekend.

The event is being run by the RNZYS, April 16-17. It will be sailed off the East Coast Bays area and is New Zealand’s largest, most competitive one-design keel boat class.

The name of the yacht is Skitzo but hopefully the team will not be embracing its name too literally over the weekend.

The aim for the team this event, apart from enjoying some fun close fleet racing in our own backyard, is to try sharpen our general sailing skills as well as long term tactics. The success of all this is obviously heavily dependent on boat speed with there being a lot of very well campaigned yachts amongst the fleet competing. A few members of the crew have been slowly working through a few upgrades this week so hopefully we will be competitive in the speed department come Saturday.

The crew for the event is as follows:

Skipper – Phil Robertson
Mainsheet – Garth Ellingham
Upwind Trim – Tom Bentham
Downwind Trim – Sam Bell
Pit – Jono Spurdle
Floater – Stephen Craig
Bow – Brad Farrand

Waka Racing would like to thank Tax Management NZ and Line 7/Events Clothing for all their help. Rick Hackett from KZ Marine especially for letting us have this opportunity.

Also a big thank you to Frontend, Spy Optic, RNZYS, Devine Consultants, PredictWind, and Wells & Co for their support.

Waka Racing