Max Jameson on the bow of Flying Higher, the boat with which he and his crew placed third at the 2025 Etchells World Championship in Victoria. Photo / Nic Douglas @sailorgirlhq
Max Jameson on the bow of Flying Higher, the boat with which he and his crew placed third at the 2025 Etchells World Championship in Victoria. Photo / Nic Douglas @sailorgirlhq
Max Jameson from Napier secured third place at the 2025 Etchells World Championship in Melbourne.
Jameson, the youngest on the podium, sailed with a crew including Jean-Claude Strong and Seve Jarvin.
The team, “Flying Higher”, competed in nine races, winning one and consistently placing in the top ten.
A Hawke’s Bay boy has taken on some of the best sailing veterans on the planet in a world championship regatta in Melbourne and came away with third place.
Max Jameson, 12, from Napier, alongside a crew of more experienced sailors, took on a field of 46 boats at the2025 Etchells World Championship at Brighton in Victoria.
The Etchells World Championship is an international sailing regatta for Etchells keelboats, a one-design sailboat race class with a maximum crew weight of 285kg, regardless of how many people are on the boat.
Max’s father, Phil Jameson – who won the America’s Cup alongside Team New Zealand in 1995 and 2000, won the Sydney to Hobart race aboard Andoo Comanche in 2022, and won the 2007-08 Volvo Ocean Race on Ericsson 4 – said Max has been into sailing for about six years now and loves it.
Max sailed with skipper Jean-Claude Strong, 74, former Olympian Seve Jarvin, 64, and Australia SailGP team grinder Sam Newton, 38, on the at the regatta on the boat “Flying Higher”.
Phil had done three Sydney to Hobart races with Jarvin and raced against Newton in the 2017 America’s Cup in Bermuda, where Phil was racing with Artemis Racing and Newton with Oracle.
When the team was looking for a small teammate, Phil thought of Max immediately.
“They’d met Max because he’d come over to Sydney to watch us start the Sydney to Hobart race a couple of times and they knew he was small, but they were desperate for him to be in that 30-32.5kg mark, which he is at the moment.
Flying Higher, with Napier's Max Jameson aboard, sails to the finish at the 2025 Etchell World Championship in Victoria. Photo / Nic Douglass @sailorgirlHQ
“So he fits and he loves sailing, so he was the perfect match for them.”
Max’s role on Flying Higher was helping out at the front, and he was on mainsheet downwind.
“But basically, he’s just a mediator between Sam and Seve – he’s the ham between the sandwich there,” said Phil.
“It’s a bit of a tight fit with four of them.”
The team raced in a total of nine races over four days, only placing outside of the top 10 once and managing to win their second race.
That was Max’s favourite part of the regatta.
“I gave Seve a big fist pump,” recalls Max.
After all the racing of the regatta, the Flying High team were only five points off second, which Phil calls “bloody good”.
“In that class, if you get a sixth position, it’s really good,” he said.
“It’s not unusual to get a 25th in that fleet if you get a bad start; it’s very hard to get around the other boats and it’s carnage at the start line with 46 boats – really crazy stuff.”
For their third placing, Flying High received a trophy that was left at the yacht club, but Max took home a few ornaments and trophies, plus other trinkets.
Jean-Claude Strong (left) next to Max and Phil Jameson and Sam Newton at the prizegiving ceremony following the 2025 Etchell World Championship at the Royal Brighton Yacht Club, Victoria. Photo / Nic Douglass @sailorgirlHQ
“It’s more the accolade than anything,” said Phil.
“He got a multitool that he can use for his fishing and sailing. So he’ll be pretty happy with that.”
Max is looking forward to following in his dad’s footsteps by racing in the Volvo Round the World Race and “stuff like that” one day when he is older, but for now he’s just trying to enjoy the last two weeks of his school holidays.
“I want to do a bit of fishing, I want to get more kingfish,” he said
“I got a big-as one the other day.”
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and spent the last 15 years working in radio and media in Auckland, London, Berlin and Napier. He reports on all stories relevant to residents of the region.
