messing about in boats

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30339, 15 January 1964, Page 17

messing about in boats

OK Titles The national Finn champion, R. H. Roberts, of Auckland, and his brother, C. A. Roberts, are among the entries received for the first New Zealand International OK dinghy championships this weekend. The five title races will be sailed off Kohimarama. Another Finn skipper participating will be P. H. Letcher, of Auckland, who competed last year in the world series

in Holland. Also among the 30 entries is the former national F class champion, M. Paterson, who this month has been in Sydney competing in the in-ter-Dominion 12 - footer races there. The only Christchurch entry is C. Vincent, of the Waimakariri Sailing Club. Vincent, president of the Canterbury owners’ association of the class, is a straight talker who is expected to make clear to Aucklanders what Canterbury skippers think of a last-minute change in contest dates after the latter had made holiday arrangements with the object of participating. The OK class, well established overseas, has been going in New Zealand for less than three years. The Olivers Its establishment and organisation was due to the efforts of the Oliver family, of the Christchurch Yacht Club, and Mr C. G. Banks, of the Waimakariri. R. G. Oliver launched the, first OK in September, 1961, and was the class owners’ first president, from which office he retired last month. He is succeeded by Mr Vincent. Mr H. Porteous took over the secretaryship at the same time from Mr J. Oliver. The national championship carries with it the Elvstroem trophy, a salute to the world’s greatest single-handed skipper. It is ironic that Ralph Roberts should deign to notice the OK class. The Water Rat remembers clearly an incident at the Canterbury Yacht Club during the New Zealand Finn championships at Lyttelton over Easter, 1961. Graham Oliver, who was interested in monotype sailing, had a set of OK plans from England, which he was showing a group of youngsters gathered in the boathouse. Sabotage 1 Roberts, passing by, saw what he thought was promotion of a rival boat. He broke up the group and humiliated young Oliver in front of his companions with an intemperate tirade. accusing Oliver of sabotaging the Olympic monotype fleet with a boat of inferior design. Time has shown that the OK dinghy, which has more than 30 hulls in Christchurch alone, has not embarrassed existing classes; rather has it introduced, or brought back into, yachting skippers who might otherwise still be on the bank. There have been no mass defections from the Finn fleet for OK dinghies—but Mr Vincent, who dropped his own Finn out of sheer perversity when he first heard of the unfair hostility of Finn skippers generally should have interesting words with the latest convert; Mr Roberts.

Moths Next year’s South Island Moth class championships will be sailed at Westport and 1966 will see the title races at Lyttelton. The home of the class in Canterbury, the Stewarts Gully Sailing Club, will have a representative at the New Zealand series in Wellington during March. He will be R. Spicer, who finished third in the South Island contest at Moana this month. Spicer, who had done no sailing since Idle Along days seven years ago, scored a second, a fifth and sixth placings. The South Island champion is F. Ashford, of Pohara Beach. He won all three heats. The runnerup was D. Cronin, of Greymouth. There were 31 entries in the South Island races. Stewarts Gully now has 18 Moths on the water (eight of them) or under construction and -expects to have more than 30 boats of the type sailing next season. Among wellknown yachtsmen who

have Moths nearly completed are M. C. Holland, who will be skippering a 14-footer in the Canterbury X class trials next week-end; his brother, A. M. Holland, who will be crewing in a trial boat of a competitor; and I. W. Scott, a former R class dinghy crew of competence from the Waimakariri.