Champions will be here to defend Javelin title

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

GISBORNE Yacht Club will host the 2021 National Javelin yachting championships over Auckland Anniversary Weekend and the event has attracted seven of the country's top boats.

The races start on Saturday at 1pm and continue through till Monday. Nine races are scheduled in all.

Current national champions David Brown and David Feek, on Trailblazer, will be here to defend their title.

Phil McNeil and Craig Gilberd, who won the Sanders Cup here in 2018, will travel from Northland with their boat named Phlipnhel.

GYC Commodore and javelin class stalwart Colin Shanks and son Ross will contest the event in local boat Riders on the Storm, and have been in training on Poverty Bay over the past few weekends.

They hope to lift the national championship for the first time, having won the Interprovincial Sanders Cup and Kingham Trophy in the past.

Notable by her absence will be Antje Muller who is abroad and unable to get back to New Zealand in time for the event.

However, at least two female skippers will be here to keep the men on their toes.

The 14-foot light-weight racing skiffs are two-person boats that have the crew trapezing off the side of the boat.

Javelins carry asymmetrical spinnakers off an extendable carbon-fibre prod, and are easily capable of speeds around 20 knots (40kmh) in favourable conditions downwind and have the ability to plane to windward as breezes increase.

Those spectacular speeds also have the capacity for equally-spectacular wipeouts, a bit like what we have been seeing in the lead-up to the America's Cup. They have been known to nosedive and cartwheel, catapulting the crew off the boat.

The public can watch the event from Kaiti Beach or the vantage points of Titirangi Reserve.