Yachting: Young helmsman puts P Class title in the bag

Only a final-round disqualification could have prevented helmsman Thomas Olds from winning the Tauranga Cup in Lyttelton yesterday.

Such was Olds' dominance of the 91-boat national P Class four-day event, that the 15-year-old could afford to finish 13th yesterday and win the title, conceding just 18 points in total.

Olds won five and finished second in nine races to comfortably win by six points from Peter Burling.

The real race was for second overall. Burling (Tauranga), conceding 24 points, fared best when discards were taken into consideration, while Chris Dawson (Murrays Bay) conceding 33, nudged Riley Dean (Naval Pt, Canterbury), conceding 35, out of third.

Kate Ellingham, of Wakatere, won the Naomi James Trophy as top female skipper. She was sixth overall.

Olds learned his basic yachting skills on the waters off his home town of Timaru and had them polished at Murrays Bay after moving to Auckland last winter.

"Half and half," was Olds' reply when asked if he still felt like a Timaru boy or a transplanted Aucklander. He represented South Canterbury when runner-up to Dean in the inter-provincial Tanner Cup and nominated Murrays Bay as his Tauranga Cup club.

"We kind of had to do that because they had trained us up," Olds said of his six months at Auckland's renowned yachting nursery.

Olds fell in love with sailing on his family's trailer yacht, had his own initiation in an Optimist, and finished 36th and 15th in the last two Tauranga Cups as he graduated from enthusiastic learner to young master of his craft.

This season he has frequently crossed tacks with Dean, to the benefit of both. Before sharing the national trophies, Olds had won the South Island championship and Dean the North Island title.

"It has helped us both. We have been quite even and were pushing each other," Olds said.

Last June, Olds transferred from Mountainview High School in Timaru to Long Bay College on the North Shore, his sights even then set on the mid-summer silverware at stake at Lyttelton.

"We thought it would be windy so we went up there and practised boat-handling skills and did a bit of fitness work," he said.

"I'm quite fit now. So when it gets windy I can power my boat up and keep it flat. It's been going real good."

Although eligible for one more P Class season, Olds does not intend to defend the Tauranga Cup. His new career, at the helm of a Starling, starts tomorrow, when the 96-strong national championship fleet begins its 11-race series at Lyttelton.

Pre-contest favourite Matt Coutts (North Harbour) won the Starling match-racing on Saturday when he beat Otago's Hayden Bruce 3-1 in a semifinal and Auckland's Andrew Mowlem 3-0 in the final.

- NZPA