Semi-finalist found at the NZ Match Racing Championships! Barker, Davis, Dickson & Jury

[Source: RNZYS] The final four flights of the round robin were completed on Saturday morning and in his final race, Barker beat his team mate Rod Davis, giving him a total of 10 wins from 11 races and the top place in the round robin.

This left Davis with 9 points and second overall.

Adam Minoprio beat his younger cousin 20 year old Michael Thorpe by 34 seconds and this gave Minoprio the extra point he needed to beat Thorpe overall in the round robin.

The Quarter Finals began around midday.

Quarter Final 1: Barker racing 8th ranked David Wood. Barker beat Wood twice and was the first to qualify for the semi finals and being the top ranked from the round robins Barker chooses his opponent in tomorrow morning’s briefing.

Quarter Final 2: 4th placed Laurie Jury sailed Minoprio. Jury and his team showed a lot of experience and beat Minoprio 2 nil to secure the second spot in the semi finals.

Quarter Final 3: Rod Davis and his ETNZ crew beat Jonathan Rankine 2 nil.

Quarter Final 4: In the mate-against-mate battle the youth programme team skippered by Michael Thorpe beat Chris Dickson and his youth programme crew in the first race by 29 seconds.

In the second race Dickson controlled the start and the youth programme team could never get close enough to attack, Dickson won the race by 1 minute and 19 seconds.

The third race was one that the youth programme team wish they could sail again. The start was even and around the top mark they were just behind Dickson but coming into the bottom mark the wind increased and the young crew found themselves flying towards the mark a bit out of control!

The spinnaker was dropped late and the rounding was slow. The team cleaned up and when they looked up their opponent was gone. Dickson won the race by a massive 3 minutes and 23 seconds.

Guy Pilkington, coach of the RNZYS Lion Foundation Youth Training Programme who is sailing with Dickson said “we just scrambled better”!

Thorpe and crew finish the regatta in 6th place overall which is the highest ever placing by a youth programme team!

Racing finished around 2.30pm and the Race Committee were satisfied with another great day on the water. With just semi-finals and finals to sail on Sunday, Race Officer Megan Kensington and Chief Umpire Jack Lloyd decided to give the sailors a small sleep in and briefing will be held 45minutes later at 9am on Sunday morning. Racing is scheduled to being at 10am.