Minoprio top of the pile

Anne Hinton reports from the New Zealand National Match Racing Championships

The ten prospective qualifiers for the New Zealand National Match Racing Championships lined up in the ISAF Grade 3 feeder series on 20-21 November at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. Participants were largely from the Auckland area, although one team, Daryl Wislang, made it up from Wellington to compete and Kiwi Scott Dickson came over from Long Beach, California. In a late decision, Britain’s Ben Ainslie, in his new capacity as a member of Emirates Team New Zealand, diverted from crewing for Dean Barker at the Nippon Cup in Japan to helm in his own right in the qualification series.

It was no surprise that the three teams which compete internationally (Minoprio, Vision Yachting; Dury, Kiwi Match; and Dickson, Dickson Racing Team, ranked, respectively, 32nd, 33rd and 34th on ISAF’s latest match race rankings) came to the fore. Ainslie, with the help of coaching from Rod Davis (who also did the main and tactics) and a first rate crew from Emirates Team New Zealand, joined them as qualifiers for the National Championships.

Racing was held on the Waitemata Harbour in breezes which were very shifty and patchy all weekend. Starting around 10 knots, with lovely warm sunshine, on the first day, winds were initially less in drizzle on the Sunday, but then, as the weather cleared, the wind up’ed to 15-20 knots and the headsails on the Squadron’s fleet of Farr MRXs (now 14 years old) were changed to number 2s for the last few races.

After a technical hitch caused by the umpires’ boats having been given diesel fuel by mistake, leading to a delay which also allowed the wind to fill in, Ainslie’s first race was against Simon Minoprio. Dominating the pre-start and covering around the course until the last run, Ainslie appeared to have the race sewn up. However, Minoprio stayed quite close in touch throughout. But a slight separation on the final run and stronger pressure on Minoprio’s side of the course saw Minoprio snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

“With tactical decisions, we’re trying to predict the future - what’s going to happen - and if you're right 65% of the time, you’re running red hot. That means you’re going to get it wrong 35% of the time. This one just went wrong. You can’t lose your nerve just ‘cause one went wrong; you have to hang in there”, said Ainslie’s tactician, Rod Davis.

The Emirates team was also up against another strong contender, Scott Dickson, brother of Chris, in their second race. This time, although racing again remained close (sensible in the varying wind conditions not to let your opponent get out of touch and maybe go off on a flyer), Ainslie secured the victory.

Minoprio, just back from competing in the cold at Match Race Berlin a couple of weeks ago, was a lot more successful this weekend back on home waters, winning the qualifier. He said: “It’s nice to win. I didn’t think we sailed as well as we could, but we won the races that counted.”

Minoprio has some unfinished business for the Nationals with fellow contemporary former Squadron youth scheme member, Laurie Jury, who won both the races the pair sailed against each other during the qualifier. Both are now in their early twenties and have started up sailing teams on the international circuit. “We always have super-close races”, said Minoprio.

Simon Minoprio will also come up against his younger brother, Adam, who is the current youth scheme champion and, as such, gained a direct place in the Nationals. Asked if he expected racing to be close between the two of them: “I hope not!” said Simon. However, he recalled that when both had sailed Optimists in their early teens, it was Adam who had taken the National title and Simon who had been runner-up. “He’s the one person I have to beat [in the match racing nationals]”, said Simon. It will, no doubt, be an interesting contest.

His other main rival, from the Squadron’s youth programme days, Laurie Dury, described racing Simon Minoprio this weekend: “The last match we had with Simon we beat him at the start and just led around. The time before that he beat us to the top mark, but we were right on his stern. Downwind we got one penalty on him when we luffed him. We did a couple of gybes, got inside and luffed him up. Down towards the mark we got another penalty on him then and then it was pretty much over.”

On sailing Ainslie [on the first day], a chuffed Dury, who had been on top after the first day’s racing, said: “It’s interesting - that boat [Emirates Team New Zealand] is loaded with professionals. We actually cleaned him [Ainslie] out at the start and led all the way around. I think if we had raced him today it could have been a different story.” Ainslie had the best record on day two of racing in terms of win-loss results.

Scott Dickson had a very close race against Jan Dawson, second in the 2004 Women's Championship, who had a mixed crew on the MRX. “We made a couple of small errors. To Jan’s credit, her team kept their cool and made no mistakes. They sailed a good clean race and did well. It was certainly not a race that we lost. It was a race that they won”, said Dickson. Dawson finished fifth in the qualification event.

“It was incredibly difficult conditions [on the harbour]. The whole team needed to be alert as to the changing breeze. There were pretty good shifts coming down, but more than that, there were big holes in the pressure. A little bit like Bermuda”, said Dickson, who has competed in the Gold Cup.

“Our best races [this weekend] were where we had a plan before the start. We stuck to that side. If we weren’t sure what was going on we just did a classic match race play the percentages move. Then we’d take a shift when we got it. The team did a great job with, number one, boat speed and, number two, keeping flexible about the position. We generally found that once we got into a controlling position we found it easy to make the right calls, but off the start line this weekend a little separation meant a massive amount of opportunity for either boat. It really was challenging.”

Scott Dickson has lived in abroad for the last 10 years and is not so familiar with the MRXs, although he did compete in the Grade 2 event at the Squadron last February. He does, however, have some background with the Waitemata Harbour. “My early match race experience was all with my father Roy,” he said. “If you look back in the chronicles of the Citizen Cup you’ll find one year where I was sailing for Roy and my brother Keith was trimming for Roy. We beat Chris in the round robin and then he beat us in the semifinals. That was when Chris had his world champion match race team. It was kind of Chris versus the rest of the family." [There are four brothers in total.]

Scott Dickson has now been on the match race circuit internationally himself for some years and is keen to be involved with the America’s Cup. “I am making myself more marketable to any America’s Cup team [not necessarily just BMW Oracle Racing].”

“I'm looking forward to racing Chris and all the higher ranked skippers”, said Dickson, when asked about the prospect of sailing his older brother. “We have not raced against each other before - ever. I suspect, being the underdog, there might be a bit more pressure on Chris than there is on me. At this level you can’t afford to be phased by racing Chris Dickson, Russell Coutts or Peter Gilmour.” This will be another match to watch out for in a potentially eventful New Zealand National Championships this coming weekend.

The main names competing this year in the New Zealand National Match Racing Championships - which only ‘rank’ as a Grade 3 event on the ISAF list - are Chris Dickson and Bertrand Pace of BMW Oracle Racing and Dean Barker of Emirates Team New Zealand, now joined by teammate Ben Ainslie. It promises to be a real cracker of an event!

Results:

1. Simon Minoprio, Matty Stuart, Stu Molloy, Hayden Goodrick, Sam Tucker (Vision Yachting, RNZYS) 7.5 pts
2. Laurie Jury, Daniel McLean, Damon Joliffe, Rob Hielkema, Brad Marsh (Team Kiwi Match, RNZYS) 7 pts
3. Ben Ainslie, Rod Davis, Grant Loretz, Andrew McLean, Richard Meacham (Emirates Team New Zealand, RNZYS) 7 pts
4. Scott Dickson, Dave Ridley, Tim Lidgard, Jim Turner, Jamie Logan (Dickson Racing Team, Long beach Yacht Club, USA) 6 pts
5. Jan Dawson, John Kensington, James Glidden, Andrew Cooke, Briar Macky (Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron) 4.5 pts
6. Graeme Sutherland, Josh Tucker, Brett Elliott, Dave Swete, Nick Bastow (Richmond Yacht Club, NZ) 4.5 pts
7. Simon Dickey, Dallas Bennett, Ian Darby, Mike O’Reilly, Conan Hunt (Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron) 4 pts
8. Daryl Wislang, Robbie McMillan, Jason Herbert, James Tucker, Steve McDowell (Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club, Wellington, NZ) 2.5 pts
9. Troy Tindall, Cam Marshall, Ben Costello, Conrad Robertson, Chris Holland (Bucklands Beach Yacht Club, NZ) 1.5 pts
10. Sam Melville, Michael Bullot, Ben Duval, Logan Fraser, Hamish Gray (Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron) 0.5 pts