‘Solings should be at Games’

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32810, 10 January 1972, Page 8

‘Solings should be at Games’

(New Zealand Press Association

AUCKLAND.

The standard of Soling-Class yachting in New Zealand is good enough for a yacht to be sent to the Kiel Olympics this year, according to Helmer Pedersen, who skippered J. Scholes’s Zeus to victory in the King Haakon Trophy series in Sydney.

Pedersen is not available to go to Germany himself, but he is adamant that this should not prejudice the SolingClass chances of representing New Zealand in Kiel. “Hugh Poole, from Wellington, was in Sydney, too, and he improved in a big way," Pedersen said.

“He is putting the effort in and is learning fast in a highly competitive class. He has a good boat and would be tny favourite to go to Germany and win.” Pedersen said that he saw nothing in Sydney that was an improvement on the New Zealand Solings. “They had bought the best of everything and they geared their boats up differently to us; they had stiff masts and flat mains, whereas w6 went for a bendy mast and a full main,” he said. “But we have nothing to learn from them. Zeus was faster than anything else there, on-the-wind and downhill.” The series involved a fleet of 35 Solings and a host of top-class skippers. It was some of the best racing in which he had participated and it was “really tactical." “If Hugh (Poole) hadn’t been forced out of the first race through a port and starboard incident and then broken his main boom in the last race, he would have been up in the first six.” Pederse* and his crew, Scholes and C. Linton, finished the series in an unusual way. Zeus was at the rear of the fleet at the first mark in extremely light weather, but passed the boats ahead as the wind increased to about 35 to 40 knots in a southerly buster. It was third on the last beat when Pedersen noticed that time was running out. “I had a plane to catch back to New Zealand, so, after a quick consultation with the crew, we turned around and put in to the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia. We already had the series won and it didn’t matter what happened in that heat.”