Wellington Harbour Festival has something for everyone

Throughout February, the waterfront arena of Lambton Harbour will offer a feast of sailing activities involving local and international sailors of all ages and experience.

The festival begins on February 5 with the Optimist Team Racing Champs, featuring teams of young sailors (maximum age fifteen years) from as far away as Eastbourne and Paremata. The typically blustery inner harbour course is guaranteed to provide excellent visibility for spectators and plenty of challenges for the region’s youngest yachties.

The following weekend, yachts from around the harbour and a boat sailed by Team New Zealand, will contest the four-day Port Nicholson Regatta, featuring a series of races of varying lengths, many starting and finishing within sight of the waterfront. Alongside this regatta, Clyde Quay Boat Harbour (alongside the Freyberg Pool) will feature a two days of intense racing for radio controlled model yachts.

February 19 is Get Out On The Harbour Day. Wellington’s big red tugs will be taking people out for rides around the harbour, and so will a fleet of yachts based at the Clyde Quay Boat Harbour. The day features a growing list of other events, including a guided tour of the port, and guided tours of the bridge of one of the largest Cook Strait ferries.

The inner harbour will also feature two Match-Racing contests. Match-Racing involves lots of very short two-boat races, with the emphasis on quick-fire competition. Wellington’s blustery racetrack and easily accessible vantage points will guarantee plenty of entertainment.

Throughout February and early March, Wellington Harbour will host stopovers for three major short-handed ocean races, as well as offering much-needed pitstops for some competitors in the Barcelona World Race, one of the world’s premier-round-the-world yacht races.

The four-boat fleet in the Velux5Oceans single-handed race is currently tied up at Queens Wharf. Specifically designed for single-handed ocean racing, these eighteen-metre yachts set sail on February 6, on their way to Uruguay, the third leg of their five-leg race around the world. They’ll race at full speed across a Lambton Harbour starting line in clear view of the waterfront, and then jockey for position all the way down the harbour and off toward Cape Horn.

By mid-February the world’s top short-handed ocean racers will begin streaming through Cook Strait in the Barcelona World Race, from Barcelona to Cook Strait to Barcelona. It’s a non-stop race, but marine businesses are on stand-by for the almost inevitable pit-stops. Nine of the fourteen boats that started this race were built in New Zealand, including current leader and hot favourite Virbac-Paprec 3, which recently claimed a new Open 60 class record, sailing a distance of 516 nautical miles (965 kilometres) in 24 hours, an average speed of 39.4 kph. One of the best-proven late-model boats in this race is GAES, built by Lower Hutt boat-builder Hakes Marine and sailed by the female crew of Dee Caffari and Anna Corbellis. Caffari likes Wellington, so she’ll be especially conflicted about sailing through Cook Strait without stopping.

On top of all this, waterfront visitors will get a firsthand look at the cream of New Zealand short-handed sailors when two separate round North Island yacht races stopover in late February. First in will be the two-handed multi-hull race (approx 22-24 February), followed a few days later by the two-handed monohull race. Both will feature spectacular re-starts in plain view of the Wellington waterfront.

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Programme Wellington Harbour Festival
February 5 Optimist Team Racing Championships
February 6 Velux5Oceans Restart
February 10–13 Port Nicholson Regatta
February 12–13 Model Yacht Regatta
February 16–20 Youth Match Racing Championships
February 16–March 16 Barcelona World Race, Cook Strait Passage
February 19 Get Out On The Harbour Day
February 23–25 2-person Round North Island Multihull Race, Wellington Stopover
February 23–27 Musto Wellington Match Race Cup
February 25–28 2-person Round North Island Monohull Race, Wellington Stopover

ENDS

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