Surf, not Omicron, stalls start of Auckland Optimist and Starling Championships
by Richard Gladwell/Sail-World.com 5 Feb 2022 23:11 NZDT
5 February 2022
One cohort of Optimists - Wakatere BC - Optimist and Starling Auckland Championships - February 5, 2022 © Richard Gladwell - Sail-World.com/nz
Heavy surf, rather than too much wind, kept the combined fleet of Optimists and Starling class singlehanders ashore, for the first day of their Auckland Championships.
The event is one of several sailing events to be staged, despite Kiwis suffering the impost of a Red Light lockdown anticipating the arrival of the Omicron variant of the COVID virus into New Zealand.
The Red Light declaration requires several social distancing measures, including a requirement that the event be only for COVID-vaccinated participants, with a group size limited to 100 people. That led to the legal work-around of spreading the fleet around several areas in the club grounds, and nearby Woodall Park.
An onshore breeze blew for much of the week, building a surf, which is unusual for the club, located on Narrow Neck beach and is largely sheltered by Rangitoto Island. Offshore the breeze varied, but was expected to drop at 15kts around 3.00pm when it was hoped to sail three races. However despite the tide dropping, and opening up the gently sloping sandy beach. However rather than reducing in size, the surf just changed shape and still would have cause too much damage to boats while being launched, and racing was abandoned for the day.
The forecast is for lighter winds on Sunday, but with rain giving way to thunderstorms.
You can see the conditions at the club via the Predictwind webcam, which also shows wind information at the club. Click here to view
Ironically New Zealand experienced one of its highest counts of +ve COVID cases being recorded - a whole 209 cases for the country. That was well short of the 50,000 predicted by Government models, increasing to 80,000 cases by Wednesday. Those projected counts were reduced to 400, by Wednesday, by one of the professional modelers engaged by the Labour Government.