By JULIE ASH
Gavin Brady won his second national match-racing title yesterday, keeping it in the Prada camp for another year.
But a lack of wind on the Waitemata Harbour meant just the first round plus 3 1/2 races in the second were completed in the four-day regatta.
The Lindauer-sponsored national match-racing
championships were to consist of two round robins, semifinals and then a final, but there was next to no breeze.
"It has been a very short regatta," said race secretary Sara Roberts.
"It was terrible, there was no breeze.
"It was really frustrating."
Brady, who is the helmsman on Prada's B boat, beat nine other skippers to the title. Aucklanders Mark Christensen and Dean Salthouse were second and third.
Brady's Prada team-mate, Rod Davis, won the title in each of the past two years. Brady won it for the first time in 1998.
Out of the 45 sailors who competed in the regatta, 27 were either current members or graduates of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron Youth Training Programme.
"It is like deja vu. I have been looking at these faces for the past 15 years," said Harold Bennett, assistant general manager of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron and founder of the youth training programme.
Other notable past winners of the national match-racing title include America's Cup skippers Chris Dickson of Oracle BMW Racing in 1999, and Team New Zealand's Dean Barker in 1997.
