Yachting: Team NZ take title by a nose

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Cameron Appleton celebrated Team New Zealand's first victory of the summer with a drop of claret.

Appleton and his Team NZ crew wrapped up the national fleet racing championship in Auckland yesterday, but not without suffering some unusual damage. Crewman Daniel Fong was carried off the boat with a badly broken nose after he was accidentally smacked in the face by team-mate Jared Henderson's elbow.

Appleton's crew also broke Grant Turnbull's three-year stranglehold on the title, dominating the round-robins and then holding on in yesterday's final two races on the Waitemata Harbour.

It was the first time top Australian sailor Adam Beashel had sailed in Team NZ colours, calling tactics as one of the new recruits for the America's Cup defenders.

Appleton said the regatta was the perfect buildup to the national matchracing championships at the end of this month.

At least five America's Cup helmsmen are entered in the matchracing event - Prada's Gavin Brady and Rod Davis, Team Oracle's Chris Dickson and Team NZ's new signing Frenchman Bertrand Pace.

Gavin McPherson from the Richmond Yacht Club was second to Appleton yesterday, with Andrew Wills, of Bucklands Beach, third.

* Across the Tasman, New Zealand's America's Cup sailors of the future were pipped at the final hurdle in the Coca-Cola Cup youth fleet racing regatta yesterday.

The Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron's three-man crew, skippered by Scott Bailey, led the three-day regatta until the final beat of the final race.

The Kiwis had the title sewn up rounding the last mark, but the crew tangled their mainsheet and dropped back to seventh in the fleet - ending up one point behind eventual winners Gold Coast Yacht Club.

* Female skipper Ellen MacArthur has been the big mover in the non-stop singlehanded round-the-world fleet, overtaking 10 boats to move into third place approaching the coast of Spain.

But Englishwoman MacArthur's race has not been without drama after three days at sea - she had to perform minor surgery on a badly bruised finger and has wrestled with a few breakages on her Kiwi-built boat Kingfisher.

She still trails battling French skippers Yves Parlier and Michel Desjoyeaux, two of the race favourites.

Englishman Mike Golding has nine days to get back into the race after breaking his mast on the first day out of the French port of Les Sables. In the Around Alone circumnavigation race two years ago, Golding ran his Team 4 boat aground off Cape Reinga.

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