Murrays Bay forced to cancel Winter Championships due to Lockdown

Toyota National Optimist Championships, Murrays Bay SC, April 2019 © Richard Gladwell

The Murrays Bay Sailing Club have had to cancel next month's Winter Champs because of uncertainty brought about by Auckland's ongoing lockdown.

The event typically attracts large fleets across junior, youth and some senior classes and was due to be held at Murrays Bay on October 16-17. It could happen only if Auckland was at Alert Level 2 or lower and the club were concerned around their ability to do this safely, even at level 2.

"We felt that it would be very difficult to achieve good compliance with the processes that would be needed to run a safe event at alert level 2," vice commodore Phil Elworthy said. "We considered a number of different approaches including splitting fleets over multiple days, staggered starts, launching from different beaches etc but ultimately none of these ideas satisfactorily mitigated the risk in our minds.

"We are also cognisant of the Murrays Bay beach being a very popular area, especially in the school holidays at the start of summer after an extended period of lockdown, which adds another layer of complications to manage. The main goal for us is to get the kids back out on the water in whatever form and we feel this approach is the best way of achieving that."