Australian Weta Championships 2025 at Speers Point Amateur Sailing Club
by Peter Hackett 16 Jan 2025 10:06 GMT
5-11 January 2025
The 1 up starts were always crowded, sometimes fun… © Paul Bellamy
Christmas in Queensland. Heat storms humidity humbug. Let's go south for the January Weta Nationals at Speers Point Amateur Sailing Club in the new year?
Hell Yeah! Heading down the M1 against the flow of gorgeous 16 and 13 foot skiffs, A cats, Impulses, and moths, are we going the right way?
At the destination, another stinking hot northerly for a couple of heats, then a howling southerly that doubled the wet and windy layday break.
Yes, this is the annual nationals trek and it just doesn't get any better.
With representatives from QLD, NSW, VIC and TAS, and a fleet that grew to 34 boats, the NSW Weta rep Ian Richardson was understandably excited to have so many boats in the paddock with the mean age of sailors taking a significant dive. This was a quality fleet with a number of state and national champions from various other classes, and new talented sailors from foiling moths as well as other monohull dinghies, beach cats, and racing yachts. In fact, the M1 traffic was just part of the evidence showing that we have a lot of critical mass getting back into exciting dinghy classes like the Weta. This is a class first designed in NZ for teaching sailing safely, then their stability attracted the old fellas like me, and now there is a subtle shift which is really nice to watch.
So the first invitation race and heats sailed in fresh northerly showed the visitors what a shifty venue this was going to be. The windward leeward courses featured a procession of shifts from across Warners Bay where the snakes were toxic anacondas and the ladders were Bailey extensions. Left generally worked, right sometimes worked, and the centre rarely worked except in the heat that I won. Go figure. (And no, it wasn't luck!) You just had to stay in phase with a group of similar sailors or out the back door you went. Downwind was tricky also with the puffs on the water splaying in often unpredictable directions, and causing even the rock stars to test if the water was deeper than one metric mast length. All competitors sounded pretty happy with the wind strengths that were generally in the 10 to 25 knot range, with a few stronger gusts.
The larger one-up fleet was always going to be a close battle between the most recent national champions from Queensland, Glenn Foley and George Owen who got first and second respectively. Glenn's son Mitchell could have easily been in the mix too but the snake got him a couple of times, and I just managed to keep the other NSW family of Ian and John Richardson from getting a yellow numberplate up on the podium.
In the 2-ups, more Queenslanders Ryan McVey and Gracie Allen won from Tim and Karen Guymer, with southerners Keith Chidzey and Alex Philpott finding form at the end of the regatta to manage third.
Organisation out of Speers Point ASC was absolutely first class, a wonderful club punching well above its weight. If only they could get the homeowners to leave their windows open at each end of the corse and steady up the windshifts, the game board might be a lot more stable!
The Weta Association excelled, with a wide range of social functions guaranteeing the growth of the class and raising many hands to be counted for the drive to Paynesville Victoria next year.
Full results here