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Leaderboard FD July August September 2023

2025 Giltinan 18s, just like old times

by Frank Quealey 9 Feb 06:26 GMT March 8-16, 2025

New Zealand sent four boats to the original World 18 footers championship on Sydney Harbour in 1938 and regularly contested regattas throughout the intervening 82 years before Covid hit in 2020 and put a premature end to the proud kiwi record in the world's most prestigious 18 footer championship.

Following a three-year break in the sequence (between 2021-to-2023, inclusive) a young three-boat New Zealand team contested the 2024 regatta and performed beyond expectations, considering the lack of knowledge of Sydney Harbour conditions.

ASCC (Eli Liefting, Adam Mustill and Josh Schon) finished 6th in the twenty-seven boat fleet and the young team's consistency throughout the nine-race regatta was rewarded when it recorded a best race podium finish (3rd) in Race 8.

The ASCC team is back again for the 2025 championship regatta and is expected to become even more competitive than it was last year.

Another major boost for the 2025 Kiwi challenge is the return of the twenty-year Giltinan veteran Alex Vallings as skipper of C-Tech.

Alex has always been at the top end of the fleet in his past Giltinan campaigns and, this time, also has the additional bonus of three-time Giltinan champions Matt Steven and Brad Collins.

Steven and Collins won three consecutive Giltinan titles with David McDiarmid on Honda Marine in 2018, 2019 and 2020 before Covid brought an end to their championship domination.

The New Zealand team for the 2025 JJ Giltinan 18ft skiff Championship is:

  • ASCC - Eli Liefting, Adam Mustill, Josh Schon
  • C-Tech - Alex Vallings, Matt Steven, Brad Collins
  • Akarana Eatery - Tim Howse, Ollie Gilmour, Pat Morgan
  • Honda Marine - Harry Butler, Olly Lloyd, Tony Fitzgerald

In 1937, James J Giltinan, Secretary of the NSW 18 Footers League, invited interested parties, in England, USA, China and New Zealand, to compete in a series of races on Sydney Harbour, named the World's 18 foot Championship, to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of NSW in 1938.

New Zealand accepted the invitation and sent a four-boat team to compete against Queenslanders and twelve from the NSW League fleet.

It was hardly surprising that there was a significant difference in the two types of boats competing in the championship as New Zealand only had two classes of 18 footers (the V-class and Mclass) racing at the time. The length of the hull was practically the only thing the Australian 18s and the New Zealanders had in common.

The regatta was a huge success, which The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper described, "The grip that 18 footer sailing has on the Sydney community was clearly demonstrated when a record crowd watched Taree win the first heat of the world championship on the harbour."

Not surprising, the League received an invitation from New Zealand to compete in an event at Auckland in February 1939 and sent a three-boat team, including the defending champion Taree (Bert Swinbourne), to compete against a large group of M-class and V-class boats.

The regatta provided great racing although several protests marred the championship for many years. Despite the protests, the final race drew enormous spectator support, with crowds on the foreshore estimated at 25,000 people, cheering for the local boats.

It appeared that the 1938 champion Bert Swinbourne's Taree had retained the title, but a late protest was upheld and the championship was awarded to Gordon Chamberlin and Manu.

Swinbourne appealed the decision but, when the issue couldn't be resolved quickly, returned home with the trophy. It remained in his possession until late 1944, when he apologised for his action and returned the trophy to the League for presentation to Gordon Chamberlin in March 1946.

Despite the ill-feeling on both sides of the Tasman, a third contest was planned for Auckland in 1947, but shipping difficulties forced a postponement for 12 months. Regardless of the problems, the championship rivalry had been established and the crowds in both Australia and New Zealand loved the action.

In 1950, the 18 footer world got its first look at the vision and skill of New Zealand boat design, construction a sailing talent when Jack Logan built a round bilge skimmer, named Komutu, with a transom bow based on a fifty-year-old design by his father.

The boat, rigged with the latest Bermudan rig, was far better than every other boat in the New Zealand fleet and when the Giltinan Championship finally got under way, Komutu dominated the contest, and led to skimmer boats being built in Auckland for the 1951 World's kiwi defence.

NSW's Bill Barnett (Myra Too) destroyed the Kiwi hopes at Sydney in 1951, but it was only a temporary setback for New Zealand design when a Canterbury team entered the championship for the first time, in 1952, with a radical cedar-planked boat, named Intrigue, skippered by Peter Mander.

Intrigue arrived in Suva, Fiji with a new rotating mast, and bigger sail plan than she originally raced with, a new set of sails and trapeze wires, plus a number of other modifications. In light breeze, Intrigue raced with a crew of just four, including two on trapeze, and carried her biggest working sails, measuring around 500 square feet.

Going into the final race, Intrigue held the championship lead, which created so much interest in the outcome that the race was broadcast on shortwave by Fijian Radio ZJV and re-broadcast by all New Zealand national radio stations. Intrigue was disqualified in the race but her results in the first two races were enough to ensure she became the 1952 champion.

Fourteen boats, representing Auckland, Canterbury, NSW, Queensland and Fiji, contested the 1954 regatta in a variety of designs. The Australian team were planked skiffs, built as lightly as technology allowed, some gaff, some marconi-rigged, and pushing the boundaries of accepted skiff design. Both New Zealand and Fiji featured the latest examples of their planked skimmers.

The New Zealand team also included new super-lightweight moulded veneer hulls, featuring innovation and technology ideas taken from the aerospace industry.

The two-man trapeze system used at Suva in 1952 had been refined by the New Zealanders and now their boats had two or three permanent trapeze men. Defending champion, Intrigue had three on trapeze and, incredibly, a fourth man lying out on top of a trapeze man.

When the racing began, Intrigue won the first two races and took the championship. Her team became the first to successfully defend the World title. New Zealand's domination was a result of the team's use of new cold-moulded hulls with two and three skins of diagonally laid planking and the fact that they carried three of the five crewmen on the trapeze wires.

New Zealand designers and sailors had become great innovators in the class during the 1950s, and it wasn't surprising that their ideas immediately changed the style of 18 footers in Australia.

New Zealand's Bernie Skinner, after two previously unsuccessful challenges, launched a new 6ft beam, double-chine hull, named Surprise, for another challenge in the 1960 contest, which had just six entries. The regatta could have become a relative 'non-event' had it not been for the controversy created by the arrival of Taipan, skippered by Bob Miller (later known as Ben Lexcen).

Skinner took the 1960 title in Surprise, but it would be another twelve years before Don Lidgard (Smirnoff) would get to hold the Giltinan Trophy for New Zealand when he won the 1972 regatta in Brisbane.

The 1960s had been a decade of disappointing results by New Zealand competitors before a young designer, Bruce Farr, gave the first sign of a Kiwi comeback when he skippered Guinness Lady into third place behind Bob Holmes and Rod Zemanek at Brisbane in 1969.

(His challenge would have been even stronger if it wasn't for gear failures in each of the first two races which ruined his title chances before he recorded two wins and a second placing in the final three races.)

The 1970s decade was 'The Golden Era' of the World 18 footer Championship and New Zealand was a strong contributor to boat design, construction and the championship winner's list.

John Chapple's New Zealand-designed Aussie, could have become the 1971 champion for Australia's Dave Porter but for unfavourable conditions which resulted in two DNFs. Aussie won two races but capsized in two others which, at that time, resulted in two DNFs, which proved too costly in the overall result.

The breakthrough finally came in 1972 when Don Lidgard's Smirnoff totally dominated the series on Brisbane's Waterloo Bay, when Lidgard successfully used the tactic of tacking downwind to make the skiff almost unbeatable off a wind. The victory was the first by a three-handed 18 footer.

Australia's Bob Holmes, who had already won four world championships to that time, immediately requested Farr to design his a four-handed boat and the result was Holmes' fifth world championship victory when he won the 1973 title on Sydney Harbour in the skiff, named Travelodge.

The US team was so impressed with Farr's design and commissioned him to design and build a new hull and make a complete set of sails, in New Zealand, for its new skiff.

Farr's design gave New Zealand its second championship win of the decade when Travelodge New Zealand 'destroyed' a strong fleet at Auckland in 1974 and was successful again in 1975 when Dave Porter's KB won on the Brisbane River.

A natural evolution of hull construction was introduced at Auckland in 1977 when Russell Bowler sailed a revolutionary Benson & Hedges. The boat was a very small, light, round-bilged hull which pioneered a polystyrene core sandwiched by a thin fiberglass laminate, and was said to be one-third lighter than the plywood New Zealand boats.

The boat impressed Australia's leading skippers so much that similar type boats were built for the following season to replace the lightweight moulded-timber construction. Unfortunately, their rush to take advantage of the costly space-age technology was well beyond the sport's capacity and the competitive level of the existing fleets.

It was the first step of a situation which ultimately led to the near-demise of traditional fleets in Queensland and New Zealand, and destroyed young fleets which had recently been established in the UK and USA.

Ever-increasing costs at the top level in the 1980s saw a rapid decline in the number of New Zealand entries at world championship regattas, but the problems were not isolated to the Kiwis. By the end of the 1980s even the 'might' of the fleet at the Australian 18 Footers League had been reduced to an unprecedented level and the club began to take action to rectify the situation.

Things only got worse for the New Zealanders during the 1990s, with minimal numbers representing at most regattas, however the new 'one design' hull concept was gaining greater strength elsewhere and even resulted in four Giltinan world championship victories to northern hemisphere teams.

It wasn't until the likes of Phil Airey, Graham Catley, Alex Vallings and Chris Skinner took up the challenge during the early years of the new millennium that New Zealand again started to become a great force in the sport.

Graham Catley, along with Alex Vallings, created the opportunity for young New Zealand sailing talent to compete at the highest level again. Graham organised sponsorships and commissioned Brett Van Munster (in Australia) to build the hulls while Alex was critical to the rigging.

New Zealand reached its greatest height in the 18 footers when David McDiarmid, Matthew Steven and Brad Collins won three consecutive JJ Giltinan World Championships in 2018, 2019 and 2020 in Honda Marine.

We can only speculate on whether the Honda Marine trio could have extended their run of victories but for the Covid pandemic, but Matthew Steven and Brad Collins will definitely be trying to extend their wins beyond three when they line up with Alex Vallings, on C-Tech, at the 2025 JJ Giltinan 18ft Skiff Championship on Sydney Harbour from March 8-16.

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