Cookes win RS Feva North Island Championships at Manly SC
by NZ Sailcraft 14 Oct 16:57 NZDT
14 October 2019
Simon and Ashton Cooke - RS Feva North Island Championships - Manly Sailing Club, October 2019 © Manly Sailing Club
Sixteen crews contested the North Island Championships for the RS Feva, held at Manly SC over the weekend as part of the Hibiscus Coast Youth Regatta
The eight-race series was won by current world champion Simon Cooke, sailing with Ashton Cooke (RAYC). World champion crew Oskar Masfen sailing with Blake Hinsley (RAYC) finished second, with David and Emmalee Ferris (Kerikeri Yacht Club) third.
The RS Feva 2019-2020 season and Traveller Series kicked off over the weekend at the Manly Sailing Club with near-perfect conditions of 5-10 knot SW to SE offshore winds in flat water.
The championship was sponsored by NZ Sailcraft - nzsailcraft.co.nz - Official Distributor for RS Sailing.
Over the winter some exciting new crew combinations have emerged from last year's successful world championship team - Josh Hyde and Nicholas Drummond, Blake Hinsley and Oskar Masfen along with Simon Cooke and Ashton Cooke. With the likelihood of these crews working with other interested crews, it should make for an experienced larger team heading to the Worlds in Travemunde, in Germany. They will be raced in 2020 in the last week of the school holidays.
As well as retaining the bulk of last years Worlds team, there have been several additions of new boats and crews to the fleet. These include numerous new Open, Youth, Family and two Junior teams. Several crews were not able to participate in the North Islands event, but it looks like there will be a hot fleet come the Nationals in 2020.
Manly Sailing Club with their helpers and members did a fantastic job running the event, clearly benefiting from their experience of recently running the O’Pen Worlds. A fleet of 17 boats sailed the eight-race series which was combined with the 29er North Island Championships which had a similar number of entries.
The day before the event was a coaching session with numerous boats participating and benefiting from tips from the four coaches and tips from the crews from the Worlds and Simon Cooke. The key points included tips for rigging and helping sail the boats well around the race track. Future events may also have similar coaching days, so please join in and benefit from the open group coaching session.
As it was the first event of the season, several crews were fairly rusty. On the downwind legs, it was noticeable that the teams nearer the back were over trimming the gennakers and often sailing too high or too low to gain good wind flow on the gennakers or achieve optimum VMG.
However, at the front of the fleet, the first three Feva's were often separated by boat lengths at most marks and finishes. Simon and his son Ashton from RAYC became North Island Champions (Open and Family), mainly due to being able to pick more wind shifts up and downwind, along with consistent boat handling and trimming.
Blake and Oskar from RAYC managed to sail some excellent races and show that they could become a very good combination winning two of the eight races, recovering from their first race which they dropped the jib and scored a DNF. This gave them the Youth North Island Championships title and second in the overall standings.
A large team from the far North headed down to Manly with their top team of David Ferris, and daughter Emmalee from KKC finished who finished third overall after sailing an exceptional regatta and often leading or mixing results up with the top two boats.
Emma Pickard and Gyanne Garner from BOIYC finished fourth (first female, second Youth) after starting with a second place to the series. Carter Stringer and Josh Smith from KKC finished fifth overall (first Junior, well sailed!), closely followed by Daniella Wooldridge and Vivien Webster Chung who finished sixth (second female and third Youth) who improved over the series to finish with two fourth places.
Paul Walker and daughter Kate Walker sailed an excellent last race to lead around the top mark. Unfortunately, they were called over at the start. But still, get credit for a very well sailed first beat and showed signs of potential.
Another team needing a mention was Wayne and Annea Avery who only sailed on Sunday, but recorded a 4, 6 and 5 in the races they sailed.
Great to see many Parent/ Child combinations, and this will be a new result category for sure!
See the full results on the links below:
Full Results click here
Results by Category click here
See the RS Feva events calendar on click here
The RS Feva North Island Championship was sponsored by NZ Sailcraft - nzsailcraft.co.nz