North Sails SR26 Nationals

Saturdays racing got under way on time with a light 5-8kt SE breeze over the race course. Jagged edge got away cleanly from the start and lead from start to finish taking the gun. Rattle and rum was second, Markone Third.



This was to be the only race held on Saturday with the wind shutting down completely by late morning. After a couple of teaser breezes filling in then swinging wildly Teresa made the call to abandon the racing for the day.

Most of the boats headed back to bucklands beach for the Dock party. We had 6 boats tied up on the loading dock ready to get on the rums and catch up with all the other SR owners and crews.
The Jagged edge team took the Dock Party to a whole new level with a ludicrously loud sound system in a custom Box on the cabintop, pumping out enough noise that you could still hear it from the Fish and chip shop down the road and dance to it in the car park!



The Crew.org Mt Gay stash held up well but with a steady stream of visitors (mostly ex SR owners who still can’t quite let go) down to the dock it started to disappear quickly.

Gaucho’s new owners also came down to see just what they had got themselves into!



As usual the Party was good and everyone checked out all the latest modifications and tweaks to the various boats and just generally caught up. Jagged edge’s battery held up well but the Amplifier was red hot by the end of the night!

Sunday morning turned out to be another cracker of a day (although the sun seemed to be extra bright for most…) with just enough wind to get a race away bang on time. Unfortunately a few boats didn’t make it to the startline on time and missed out, a big lesson for everyone on being on time! This race was finished at the top mark due to a dying breeze.



Rattle took the Win with Markone 2nd and Jagged 3rd. This put Rattle in first place, by 1 point over Jagged with Markone a further 1 point behind.

The wind looked really fickle for a while and we were very worried that it would end up like Saturday with no wind for the rest of the day. Luckily the wind filled back in to a light 5-8kt easterly and Teresa got the course re laid and sent us straight into another race. The jagged edge took the win and with it the overall lead back from Rattle.



Mercenary with a semi pro team including Bucklands beach YC Coach Laurie Jury really stepped the game up winning the next 2 races straight with Jagged right behind taking 2 second places. Rattle had put themselves out of contention by getting an 8th and Markone a 5th making it a battle between Mercenary and Jagged edge for the final race.

At this stage in the regatta Jagged was comfortably ahead on points but with the start of the 6th race things changed dramatically as 6 completed races allows for a discard of your worst race. Jagged was dropping a 3rd and mercenary a 4th bringing the points closer. Mercenary had to be 3 places ahead of Jagged or get a gun with jagged no closer than 3rd to make it a tie and a win on countback with 3 guns verses 2.

After an even start Mercenary got away to a handy lead with Jagged getting mixed up with a few boats and rounding the top mark in 3rd spot. If these results had continued till the Finish Mercenary would have taken the title!

Up the second beat Jagged picked up a great left hand shift and was right on the stern of Mercenary going around the top mark. Laurie who is has been ranked 32nd in the world at matchracing saw that the still needed another boat between them and Jagged to take the title so used his boat on boat matchracing skills to hold Jagged out hoping that he would be able to let a few boats in between, eventually Mercenary’s helmsman Andrew couldn’t keep the bow head to wind and both boats reached back down to the top mark. Jagged managed to pass Mercenary on the run to take their 3rd gun and overall Championships.

Markone achieved a 4th on line and an overall handicap win stepping their performance up remarkably from previous years. It just shows that with new sails and a good team any boat is competitive.

Out of the top 4 boats every one of them had a different keel, Jagged has the standard Mk2 keel, Mercenary has the new deep bulb keel, rattle has a modified Mk2 and Markone has the original fin with no bulb, so it seems that in the keels don’t make a huge difference in the light.

It was also good to see all the top 3 boats carrying at least 1 new North Sail and supporting the regatta sponsor.

Gaucho has now been sold and will be coming to westhaven making that 5 SR26s in the marina. Nigel has been with the class for almost 4 years now and it will be sad to see him go. At the same time glad that it is in good hands and will still be racing in the Auckland fleet.
The North Sails SR26 nationals was another great sailing event both on and off the water, to see how many great friends have been made through this class is fantastic. The social side of the SR26s makes this class strong and so much fun to be involved in.

Auckland champs are yet to be scheduled and who knows which boat will win!

Winter series and Simrad are also coming up with at least 5-7 boats racing together.

Thanks to the sponsors North Sails, Crew.org.nz and Mount Gay.


Final results


Fleet race, 9 entries
 Jagged Edge 1 (3) 1 2 2 1 7      1
Mercenary (4) 4 2 1 1 2 10         2
Rattle n Rum 2 1 3 4 (8) 6 16     3
Markone 3 2 (5) 3 5 4 17            4
Aqua Vitae (8) 5 4 6 7 3 25        5
T-Rex 5 (8) 6 7 3 5 26               6
Trainsmash 7 (dnc) 7 5 4 8 31    7
Gaucho 6 7 8 (ocs) 6 7 34          8
Travellin Man (9) 6 9 8 9 9 41     9






Josh Tucker