Competitors in the 2022 Bay of Islands Sailing Week had to contend with blustery conditions. Photo/Lissa Photography
Bay of Islands Sailing Week calling for competitors
Organisers of the Bay of Islands Sailing Week are encouraging those who want to participate in the January 2024 event to get their entries in early.
Early birds who sign up and pay their regatta entry fee by December 31 will go in the draw to win a top-of-the-line Gill Offshore sailing jacket from Burnsco in Ōpua.
However, skippers who are late to the start line and don’t enter in time will be hit with an additional late entry fee of $100 on top of their normal entry fee. Organisers hope the change will encourage more competitors to enter before the December 31 cut-off, which helps the volunteer organising committee run a successful event.
Bay of Islands Sailing Week is the country’s biggest multi-day keelboat regatta and one of the southern hemisphere’s premier sailing events. It attracts sailors from around New Zealand and overseas. It’s not, in fact, a sailing week.
The 21st running of the event starts on January 23, 2024 and goes for three days to January 26, 2024 but there are already 20 yachts on the entry list, with at least a further 80 expected to sign up before the regatta begins.
Next year’s event has a new venue. The southern end of the Bay of Islands Marina in Ōpua will provide more space, better views and organisers are hoping for a festival atmosphere for the hundreds of sailors and their friends and families expected to take part.
Regatta chairman Ian Clouston said the entry cutoff date seems like it’s still a long way over the horizon “but it always comes around faster than you think, it seems to speed up at the end of the year”.
“If we know which boats are competing in each division nice and early it lets us plan the regatta much more easily,” he says.
The poetic effect of Bunnings
The Bunnings store in Fairway Drive in Kerikeri is a familiar sight to locals. But that’s about to change.
A new Bunnings mega-store is set to open in Waipapa by the end of the year with the Kerikeri store and the Kaikohe Bunnings store set to close the same day. Bunnings says all team members from the two closing-down stores have been offered roles in the new Waipapa store so no one is displaced.
The impending opening has created a flurry of excitement on Facebook. Darren Breeze from Kerikeri wrote a whimsical piece on the subject which in one day received 255 likes and 73 comments. In part it read:
“In a momentous ceremony that resonated with both tradition and a touch of whimsy, the Bishop of Bunnings presided over the consecration of the New Keripapa Cathedral. As sunlight bathed the newly erected structure, the holy hammer, a symbol of divine craftsmanship, was used to anoint the building, infusing it with spiritual significance ...”
Except, he didn’t write all of it himself but called on the “services” of ChatGPT. In real life he runs a Kerikeri business called The Computer Guy and he’s been looking at ChatGPT for around eight months.
“You just load in the scenario framework and it produces copy,” he said before adding “but there are errors that you have to rectify.”
In reply to his post, Terry Taylor wrote an equally whimsical piece in the form of a ditty which read in part:
“In the land of Keripapa, oh what a sight, The New Cathedral rose, bathed in sunlight so bright! With the Bishop of Bunnings, presiding so grand, A whimsical ceremony, across all the land. The holy hammer swung, with a mystical twist, Anointing the building, as if by a magic wrist. The congregation gathered, so eager and merry, With offerings of white bread, oh so airy and dairy!”
The Computer Guy suspected Terry Taylor’s poem was produced with the help of Chat GPT but when asked Mr Taylor replied poetically:
“I rhymed and I riddled, oh, what fun it was, to create a poem without any pause. With each word I chose, I felt quite free. For this poem was written, you see, by me!”
Checkmate. Northland Chess Championship returns.
The chessboards are set and the pieces poised for battle as Kerikeri hosts the Northland Chess Championships on October 28.
Last year the Kerikeri Chess Club, in partnership with the community group Our Kerikeri, pioneered the chess extravaganza.
The 2022 Junior winner was Benjamin Wyrsch-Copplestone, the Youth winner was Scott Haines and the Senior winner was Saibo Li. Prize money winner was Xxavier Willoughby-Ansell.
There were 130 players including a contingent of talented junior players (12 and under). They all descended upon Kerikeri along with teams from various smaller schools, kura and clubs.
This year there is a projected participation of up to 150 players, which is maximum capacity. Event organiser Lasse Pedersen says the vision is to create a fun, inclusive and family-friendly event.
“It not only captivates locals but players from across Northland, from Mangawhai to Kaitāia. There are active chess clubs rallying to ensure this annual gathering serves as a cornerstone for year-round success.”
He says participants include “sprightly” 6-year-olds to seasoned veterans in their 80s, all united by the love of the board game. Players compete in three age categories: Junior, Youth, and Seniors.
Registration for playing in the tournament is still open with some spaces left. Register on website: sites.google.com/view/kerikerichessclub/home. It is open to the public.
Coates memorial worth a look
If you live points south and are heading to the Bay of Islands or the Far North in general this summer, you most likely will drive past a stone memorial at the base of the Brynderwyns without giving it a second thought.
The memorial is a tribute to Gordon Coates who was the first elected New Zealand-born prime minister. The memorial is not as flash as, say the Savage Memorial at Bastion Point, but it’s still important according to Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Tanoga Northland manager Bill Edwards.
“Gordon Coates had the misfortune of being finance minister during the premiership of George Forbes during the Great Depression of the 1930s,” he says.
“He was widely respected and acknowledged as a community leader in the Kaipara where he was born and lived and in 1940 he served as minister of armed forces and war coordination under Prime Minister Peter Fraser in the Labour-led war administration.”
At this stage the National-Labour war coalition had failed, though Fraser invited Coates to continue serving in the Cabinet as an independent, effectively going against his party’s wishes.
He would famously commute from Wellington to Matakohe by train every weekend, and whenever he reached the turnoff to Matakohe at the base of the Brynderwyns he would invariably breathe a sigh of relief. The site of the memorial today is the exact spot where Coates always knew he’d made it home.
He was tasked with a monumental workload. He was a heavy smoker all his life and had developed heart trouble. He collapsed and died in his Wellington office in May 1943 at the height of World War II.
The memorial on the plaque, in te reo Māori, speaks of the respect with which Coates was regarded: “Takoto e pa i runga i au mahi nunui mo te Pākehā me te Maori”. Rest thou, O father, upon the great work you have performed for Pākehā and Māori alike.
It’s worth a second look, or even a first.