Yachting: Sibling rivalry in Laser crews

New Zealand's leading Laser sailor, Andrew Murdoch, will join forces with his brother and sister in an attempt to retain the World Team Racing trophy on home waters, starting on Sunday.

Olympic hopeful Murdoch, aged 20, was part of the New Zealand teams who won the world title in Ireland in 1999 and the Czech Republic in 2001.

Now the Murdoch clan of Andrew, his elder brother Hamish, sister Rebecca and three other top sailors from the Kerikeri Yacht Club will form one of the New Zealand teams defending the title on the Waitemata Harbour in a week-long regatta.

For the first time, New Zealand will have two teams contesting the championship.

The other crew, New Zealand II, includes some of the world's top youth sailors from the Kohimarama Yacht Club. They will be captained by Jake Bartrom, Australasia's No 1 Laser Radial sailor, with Sarah Bilkey, New Zealand's top woman Starling competitor.

The New Zealanders will be up against 14 teams representing eight nations. All crews will race in an identical fleet of International 420 two-person centreboard dinghies, battling it out on a spectator-friendly racecourse, set on the edge of the Viaduct Harbour.

Many of the teams in the world championship regatta have family connections - brother-and-sister or husband-and-wife combinations.

In New Zealand I, Andrew Murdoch will helm one of the team's three boats with sister Rebecca as his crew, and brother Hamish will helm another, with Josh Galbraith. Andrew Ardern is skipper of the third boat with Karen Lambert his crew.

Apart from Bartrom and Bilkey, New Zealand II feature Scott Kennedy, a two-time national P-class champion, and Geoff Woolley, who helped New Zealand win the ISAF world youth sailing championships in Canada last year, as helmsmen. James Bilkey and Jane Macky are their respective crews.

Andrew Murdoch, who is ranked No 1 in the Laser dinghy class in New Zealand, says family instincts can be an advantage in team racing.

"If you really know each other well, and you know how the other person in your boat reacts, it's a big help," he says. "Although we fought like any normal siblings as kids, Rebecca and I get on well when we're sailing together."



Each team competes with three two-person boats and sails off against another team to score points. The regatta begins with a round-robin followed by a series of sail-offs to determine the winning nation.

Not all the sailors are youthful. The Great Britain I team includes a submarine designer, a British Army colonel and an urban planner.



The crews will have two days to acquaint themselves with the boats before the regatta begins. It finishes on Friday.

Teams competing: Australia, Great Britain, India, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, United States (all with two teams), the Czech Republic and the Netherlands.