The Tauranga Boys do Kawau

Put two centreboard sailors with a guy who was born on an Elliott seven and what do you get? The T.Y.P.B.C.’s crew for the Kawau Island National Training Week.

The week is effectively a crash course on how to race keelboats. Or so we were told. What we experienced was closer to a nautical outward bound. Strong winds restricted the time spent sailing to two and a bit days and kite usage to only two short races. During these races cries of “let something off” were soon followed by others like “s*@$ not the halyard.” In the actual racing we were let down by our tactics though strangely fared much better in the kite races.

What did our coaches organize for the rest of the week? Boat speed and tactical seminars abounded as did violent games of capture the flag. Oh and the odd attempt during pouring rain to ditch us in the bush. They left us with the words “lunch is at the third peak” (the coaches only made it to the second peak but no one could remember which one it was anyway).

At this point I would like to declare our innocence for the late night attempt to take the rudder pins off the boats and place them on the top of that third peak. The group responsible never made it to the peak (funny how hard it is to find a mountain at three in the morning) but left a note pinning the crime on “the Tauranga Boys.” Why us? Simple we got the room with beds while the rest of the guys slept on the floor in the lounge or in the tent.

The week had an unbelievably steep learning curve and all three of us learned a lot about racing  keelboats. We would like to thank the T.Y.P.B.C. and Bruce Goodchap for making our trip possible

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