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Press, 5 March 1982, Page 17

Mike McPhail, pictured above at the helm of Rantan, and Marton Sinclair, of Canterbury, returned home this week with two trophies won during the New Zealand and world Flying Fifteen yachting championships in Napier. Their prizes testified to the advancement they have made at national level over the last 12 months. McPhail and Sinclair were awarded the Craddock Fibreglass Trophy for having shown most improvement compared to the 1981 national contest, and the New Zealand Association Cup as a mark of their improvement within

the 1982 series. An over-all placing of fourteenth in a formidable international fleet of 78 starters in the New Zealand championship — which was won by the Irishmen, John McCann and William Bassett — earned McPhail and Sinclair the right to represent New Zealand in the world event. A second Canterbury helmsman, Paul Pritchett, who had the national youth coach, Harold Bennett (Auckland), as his for’ard hand, was also included after finishing sixteenth. Their order was reversed in the world championship, Pritchett and

Bennett being nineteenth and McPhail and Sinclair twentyfourth behind the new titleholders, Peter Gale and Mark Rimmington (Australia). Although Roger Craddock and Stephen Battley (Auckland) only failed to retain the world championship for New Zealand by 1.4 points, greater experience of offshore sailing enabled overseas competitors to prosper on the waters of Hawkes Bay. Conditions were generally light, but on the one occasion that heavy seas were encountered Pritchett and Bennett

returned a most creditable fifth. Two Otago crews, Gerry Coxhead and Peter Gilbert and the husband-and-wife combination of Leatham and Anne Edmond, were also in the New Zealand team, finishing twenty-sixth and thirty-third, respectively. Hec Dawson and his wife, Lee, of Canterbury, competed as a private entrv, and were fifty-fifth. The Flying Fifteen class is in good heart in Canterbury, and the 1982-83 national contest will be staged at Charteris Bay. It will probably be held in late January of next year.