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ePaper created 2014-06-11, 13:05:34 | version 1.30.01
87 each other in the Citizen. More than half of these yacht racing elite had won world titles in at least one type of sailing, and many held titles in more than one class. At least 27 of the skippers had been involved in the ultimate match racing event, the America’s Cup. The Squadron Challenge Cup, which was awarded annually to the winner of the Citizen Watch Match Race series, remains the property of the Stewart 34 Association. It has recently been used as the annual prize for the Stewart Championship Series. Jack Alison, who was the Chairman of the Squadron Match Race Committee from 1981 through 1985, offered some very interesting and entertaining recollections of the Citizen in a paper dated 12 December 2006. “The first match racing using Stewart 34’s started in 1978 through the efforts of Bill Miller and Tony Bouzaid with local skippers initially,and then some overseas skippers in 1980. The series went well,and showed potential for further development which the Squadron, with the backing of the sponsor Warwick Browne of Citizen Watches determined should be done. I was asked to chair the 1981 series and continued in this position until after the 1985 series when I relinquished the position to Richard Endean. Our goal was to develop the CitizenWatch Match Race series into an event of consequence and with the goodwill of all involved we believed we achieved this, particularly as we had such good support from the news media and TV. As sponsor.,Warwick Browne was particularly supportive at all times once he was aware of our total programme, and he could assess the exposure to be received as a result of the match race series. Being a new event where advertising in some form was required on the boats the discussions about this were not always easy with the NZ Yachting Federation. In our efforts to achieve as much publicity as possible we were fortunate in having with us Peter Montgomery, who also gave considerablehelpinsuggestingandlocatingoverseasskippersof notefortheInternationalSeries,plusDocWilliamsof TVNZ. Through their efforts we achieved a first for yachting in getting the racing on TV which was much enjoyed by the yachting and non-yachting fraternity alike. We also set out to involve as many members of the Squadron as possible including wives and we believe we were successful in this. During the racing we established reporting posts all manned by women on North and Bastion Heads who reported race progress back to the Squadron by radio to a master control board,so that even if the races could not be seen from the Squadron people there could be right up with the play. During the racing., women also arranged for and delivered packed lunches to all the boats taking part. Again on race days free breakfasts were provided for all crews and officials. The form of the event consisted of a trial series from the S-34 skipper to find the three top NZers and this generally took place in October/November. The International series was held in late March early April of the following year to which seven top overseas skippers were invited making a total of ten skippers in all when the three NZers were included. We were fortunate in attracting some of the best names in the yachting world to the event, with one disappointment that we were never able to get Dennis Connor. During a trip I was on to San Diego where he then lived, I rang him to see if he could be persuaded to come to NZ. He was away and I spoke at length to his then wife who made it very clear what she thought of yachting events and the way they prevented Dennis from having a normal home life. One of the early stalwarts in match racing was the Irishman Harold Cudmore who was a somewhat rambunctious individual but with a good heart. On one occasion the winner of the series was to be from Harold and Rod Davis but a protest had been lodged and depending on who won the protest determined the winner of the series. Rod was too much of a gentleman against Harold and the protest dragged on until after one in the morning by which time Jimmy Mitchelson who was the chairman was almost punch drunk from Harold’s continuous diatribes and the decision went to Harold much to the chagrin of Rod who felt unfairly treated, as did those of us who were present at the meeting. Other notable overseas contestants were: Hugh Treharne (Aus), Dick Deaver (USA), Rod Davis (USA), Scott Perry (USA)