Revvin' Up The Volvo

After a decade in the doldrums of blue ocean racing, Auckland yachties are looking forward to the City Of Sails anchoring the world's largest sailing event.
March 2012's stopover for the Volvo Ocean Race, earlier named the Whitbread, will be the eighth time the race has come to Auckland. This is the 11th race in the event, first held in 1973/74.

NZ challenger Camper

Auckland used to be an automatic choice as a stopover but in the past three events, organisers experimented by choosing Wellington and Melbourne - or in the last race, no Australasian stopover at all. The last Auckland stopover was during the 2001-02 race, although there was a 48hr pitstop in Wgtn in 2005-06.
Viaduct Harbour will get a race village makeover for the stop, with Latitude Island being the entertainment hub. A pit lane by the Viaduct Events Centre will allow audiences to see the fleet up close and watch teams prepare for the next leg.

This ain't pleasure-boating...!

The nine-leg race starts in Alicante (Spain) at the end of next month on October 29th., with stopovers in Cape Town (South Africa), Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), Sanya (China), Auckland (March 8-18 2012), Itajai (Brazil), Miami (United States), Lisbon (Portugal) and Lorient (France) with the finish in Galway (Ireland) on July 1st. Each stopover features an in-port race, with points counting towards the overall standings, and a pro-am race.
March 8: Boats scheduled to arrive in Auckland at end of Leg 4
March 16: Pro-Am Race
March 17: In-Port Race
March 18: Start of Leg 5 to Brazil
Thankfully we won't be bombarded with 18 months of pre-stopover jingoistic advertising, and can actually enjoy the event for what it is...rather than what the country can mercilessly milk out of it!

The Golden Hour

When sports fans recall NZ’s greatest sporting days, the events of September 2nd. 1960 always occupy a prominent place. It was the day of the "Golden Hour", when Peter Snell and Murray Halberg indelibly inked NZ’s name on the Rome Olympic Games canvas with a remarkable track double.
21yr.old Snell had gone to Rome as a relatively little-known middle-distance runner. He'd raced outside NZ only once before, his world ranking over 800m was just 26th, and he was not favoured for a medal.
But he was helped by the calming presence of his experienced teammate Halberg, and the careful preparation of legendary coach Arthur Lydiard.
In the 800m final, run at a red-hot pace, the favourite (world record-holder Roger Moens of Belgium) took the lead 100m from the finish and looked a certainty. But Snell surged past on the inside, crossing the line with his eyes shut. When he discovered he’d won gold, he was so stunned that he didn’t even take a victory lap!
Then it was Halberg's turn in the 5000m. The popular NZer was a world-class miler in the mid-1950s and, although disappointing in the 1500m final at the ‘56 Melbourne Games, he won gold in the 3-mile event at the '58 Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff, and easily qualified for the 5000m final in Rome.
Running to a plan set by Lydiard, he burst ahead of the field with three laps to go, and hung on bravely as other runners chased him down the home straight. Inspired by Snell's triumph, Halberg won in 13 minutes 43.4sec. A couple of strides after reaching the tape, he collapsed on the infield, completely spent. Australian distance champion Ron Clarke described it as 'probably the most courageous run in Olympic history'.
NZ has had other great days at the Olympics but never in such glamorous, high-profile events as on that golden day in Rome.
Sir Peter Snell, KNZM, MBE - voted NZ’s Sports Champion of the 20th Century - now resides in Texas. His autograph, signed for me as a young teenager, is a prized possession.
Sir Murray Halberg, ONZ, MBE, established The Halberg Trust, which supports children with disabilities to be active in sport, creation and leisure.
Arthur Lydiard, ONZ, OBE, died in December 2004, lauded as one of the most outstanding athletics coaches of all time.

Our Last Catalina

After a recent photographic trip around the Port Albert/Wellsford area, I was searching on-line for other sights of interest in that area...
when I stumbled upon the tale of our air force’s last Catalina flying boat, and its association with Wellsford!
The story came from Seawings (a site dedicated to the history and operations of the world's Flying Boats), and appears to have taken years of exhaustive hunting to piece together...!
Between 1943-1956 the Royal New Zealand Air Force operated 56 Catalinas (all Consolidated PBY-5 and Boeing PB2B-1 non-amphibious flying boat versions). The last of these boats were withdrawn and sold for scrap in 1956.
One Boeing PB2B-1 Catalina (NZ4055, 'KN-L' of No.6 Squadron), was sold for £250 to local garage proprietor Jack Sellars of Wellsford, North Auckland. It was towed up the coast from the Hobsonville airbase, and beached at Whangateau.
Jack planned to convert it to a twin-screw sea-going launch with 20 bunks. The wings and tail unit were first removed by axe and handsaw, and the aircraft - or what remained of it - was trucked to Wellsford. When eventually finished, a further part of its tail was to have been removed, part of the fuselage top replaced by a small false deck, it was to have a wide buffer strip around it and below-decks there was to be a stateroom, bunkroom, navigation room, and storage space all separated by watertight bulkheads.
For a decade, the fuselage could be seen from the road, along the side of Mr Sellars’ house at 69 Rodney Road - something of a local landmark! Everybody needs a dream... unfortunately this particular one did not come to fruition, and the fuselage was finally scrapped in the late 1960s (...thankfully Don Subritzky took these photos in 1968, shortly before that happened).
As these details took years to track down, it illustrates the rarity of the material – and the need to save the past for the future, whether we think it may be of interest or not.
[NZ's (and Australasia's) only airworthy Catalina, ZK-PBY, is owned and operated by the Catalina Group of NZ and is an amphibious version. It purchased the plane in 1994 and painted it as NZ4017
(XX-T) of No.6 Squadron RNZAF. It's one of few airworthy Catalinas remaining in the world. A second Catalina is held by the RNZAF Museum for restoration - it was imported from New Guinea by the Museum of Transport and Technology in 1979, after lying abandoned and vandalised for several years.]