Bay Harbour: November 10, 2021

Bay Harbour News Wednesday November 10 2021
6
NEWS
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz
Yacht club celebrates centenary
ONE HUNDRED years of
yacht racing at Lyttelton will be
celebrated at the Naval Point
Club this weekend.
Naval Point was formed in
2001, but its predecessor club,
Canterbury Yacht & Motor Boat
Club, was established in 1921.
Research by club historian
Wayne Nolan has shown an
earlier Canterbury Yacht Club
operated at Lyttelton from 1886
until World War 1, and many
of its members were foundation
members of the new club in 1921.
The primary reason for
CYMBC’s establishment was to
enable Canterbury to challenge
for the new interprovincial Sanders
Cup, which quickly became
one of New Zealand’s major annual
sports events and remained
so until into the 1950s.
The most cherished achievement
by a club member came
when Peter Mander and Jack
Cropp won the Sharpie class gold
medal at the 1956 Melbourne
Olympic games – opening the
door for all the international successes
New Zealand has enjoyed
in sailing in subsequent decades.
The Melbourne games were
the first at which New Zealand
was represented in yachting, and
Mander had almost as difficult a
job to beat his brother Graham
in the New Zealand trials as he
did to win the gold medal. The
gold medal was claimed sensationally
when Australia pipped
Mander and Cropp for second
place in the last race to seemingly
clinch the medal.
However, France successfully
protested against Aussie skipper
Rolly Tasker over a collision
during the race, the Aussies were
disqualified, and New Zealand
won the gold on a countback.
Peter Mander also won world
18-footer titles in 1952 and
1954, and other CYMBC sailors
notably Peter Lester, Matthew
Stechmann, Shelley Hesson,
and Andrew May have also won
world titles.
Lester and Stechmann both
won world championships in the
popular and highly competitive
OK dinghy class and Lester was
also in Admiral’s Cup and One
Ton Cup winning teams.
Both were Lyttelton boys, and
the club has always had a close
relationship with the Lyttelton
community which continued
even after the opening of the
road tunnel in 1964 brought
much more ‘townie’ involvement
with the club.
SAILING
HISTORY:
The Naval
Point Yacht
Club in
Lyttelton,
home of
several
of New
Zealand’s
leading
sailors, is
gearing
up for its
centenary
celebrations.
It is doubtful if any New Zealand
sailing club has produced
more national championship
winners than CYMBC/Naval
Point, with George Brasell and
Eliott Sinclair in the pre-war
Sanders Cup era, Peter and
Graham Mander in a variety of
classes, and a long list of winners
in many different classes since
those days.
The club has had a particularly
close association with the R class,
and yachties like the Manders,
Steve and Paul Macintosh, Sean
Milner, Dan Leech, Paul Roe and
Malcolm Snowdon have ensured
the national Leander Trophy has
been a Canterbury monopoly for
much of its 70-year history.
The club has always had a tenaciously
loyal membership, and
there are at least 12 families who
have sailed at the club through
three generations, including
the Sinclairs, who were so well
represented that the club ran an
annual Sinclair family race in
the 1950s. This is being revived
by today’s family members, and
seven Sinclairs will compete in
Young 88 keelers when centenary
events are sailed on Friday.
Quite a number of members
have been active sailors at
the club for five and even six
decades, with the standout
probably being Sumner yachtie
Tony Park, who has been sailing
at the club since 1961 and
competing in the physically
demanding R class since 1975.
He adopted to the the new
technology of foils in the class
and in 2017 the flying pensioner
scored a popular victory in the
Leander Trophy, sailing with
Steve Macintosh.
• A centenary history
of the club, Sailing in
a Volcano, has been
compiled by Nick Tolerton,
Wayne Nolan, and Mandy
and Grant Nelson, and is
being launched on Friday.
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