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ePaper created 2014-06-11, 13:05:34 | version 1.30.01
63 overseas experts Ted Hood, Harold Cudmore, and Hugh Treharne to Auckland. Possibly because the locals were able to get their hands on their boats - Stewart 34s - early and tune them radically, the eventual winner was a local and, as a matter of fact the last to be invited to compete. Over the first two days, Harold Cudmore, winner of the Lymington Cup in ‘78 and runner up to Deaver in the French series of the same year, was the front runner, winning all his first five heats. Then on the final day, he fell to Dickson and after that suffered from a dying wind and growing tidal stream in his match against another Kiwi, Ray Haslar. Till his match against Dickson, Cudmore had usually got the better of the starts but this time the pair came across the line so equal that it was Cudmore who was first to tack away. The direction in which this tack took him was ill favoured by tide and that is why Cudmore turned the first mark already 45 seconds behind, a deficit which proved too large to recover. This left Dickson and Cudmore sharing the lead on five wins each. The wind went so light for the Haslar Cudmore heat that though the latter approached the windward mark with a handy lead, he was forced to kedge to stem the current. He later had trouble recovering his ground tackle. Afterwards he claimed that this was because another competitor in a later pairing had dumped his anchor atop his, Cudmore won a point from the Jury for being materially prejudiced. Dickson and Cudmore each won their last two pairings and this brought them level at eight each. Dickson won the decision by virtue of having beaten Cudmore in the relevant match. Peter Walker, the ‘77 Half Ton Cup winner and assistant to Bruce Farr came third with six wins. Ray Haslar, the champion of the Stewart 34s who was, perhaps surprisingly, allowed to use his own impeccable champion boat came fourth on five, beating the ‘79 Half Ton winner Tony Bouzaid on the count back. Then came Peter Newlands, the young New Zealand Contender World Champion, now domiciled in Cowes England (he acted as Phil Crebbin’s tactician in the later 1979 Lymington Cup). Ted Hood, who many New Zealanders had made their favourite to win was next, sharing three wins with co-skippers Murray Jones (European 470 champ) and Andy Knowles, and also with Australia’s well known Hugh Treharne. Stu Brentnall, One Ton winner brought up the rear with a single win, achieved at the expense of Ted Hood. Hood is not at his best match racing. When in 1974 he sailed the America’s Cup defender, Dennis Conner was forced upon him as Starting Helmsman. We mentioned earlier about the tuning done by the locals. It seems they were able to take over their boats before the overseas visitors had even arrived. It seems they recut sails, painted bottoms, removed interior gear and did much else that the regulations of the Congressional and Lymington Cups would - and quite rightly - forbid. For these match events to make sense it is up to the organisers to ensure that the fleet is as identical as human ingenuity can make it and then to prohibit all changes, otherwise the visitors will always be discriminated against. At Lymington for instance they insist on all boats changing down to smaller jibs or reefing or not using spinnakers at the same time, by hoisted signal. At Long Beach they compare and equate flotation and even Inclining Factors, beforehand. It also seems that the Stewart 34s, some of them 20 years old, are not as one design as some. Newland’s boat was the only one to have a rudder skeg. Perhaps as a consequence, his turning circle was larger than the others, but his heavy weather speed was excellent. Brentnall’s allotted boat did nothing, by coming last, to remedy its reputation as a slow one. It seems it came last in 1978 too. It also seems that because the Kiwi event was heavily sponsored by a single company that the racing venue was chosen not on its racing merits but because of its accessibility to spectators. This explains why the tidal stream became a factor. Each boat displayed a tastelessly large company logo on its bow. It is for reasons like these that the Long Beach and Royal Lymington Yacht Clubs consciously avoid sponsorship from a single source and thus retain complete control over their own events. Tony Bouzaid sent a scathing response to Jack Knights in a letter dated 20 June 1979: Dear Jack, Judging by the crankiness, sarcasm and lack of accuracy appearing in your last issue of Sail Mail you have become affected by that common affliction-old age. You also appear to have caught that other disease so common among contemporary journalists cynicism or “bad news is the only news,” if you cannot make it sound bad, don’t print it. I refer to your article on, the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron match racing series and make the following comments from one who actually competed.