The Kiwis led the way on the opening day of the Symonite 2019 OK Dinghy Worlds hosted by the Wakatere Boating Club, New Zealand.
Andrew Phillips (image above) of the host club led all the way to win from Dan Slater and Luke O’Connell.
Fourth place went to Fredrik Loof of Sweden, with fifth Steve McDowell, and sixth was Britain’s Nick Craig.
Only one race was sailed with a very changeable light wind all day. Numerous recalls with a following current caused 18 BFDs.
The top three led round the fleet round the course with Phillips covering Slater up the shortened final leg to the finish, while O’Connell led Fredrik Lööf and Steve McDowell over the line.
Phillips said, “Very tricky out there. Hats of to Paul [Davies, the Race officer] and the race committee for eventually getting the start off in extremely tricky conditions I don’t know how many black flags we had or how many general recalls we had but we only had one race in the end.”
This championship marks his return to the class he last sailed when the world championship was in Napier in 2002.
Symonite OK Dinghy Worlds 2019 – Leading positions (111 entries)
1st NZL 559 Andrew Phillips – – 1 pts
2nd NZL 562 Dan Slater – – 2 pts
3rd NZL 578 Luke O’Connell – – 3 pts
4th SWE 69 Fredrik Loof – – 4 pts
5th NZL 579 Steve McDowell – – 5 pts
6th GBR 2208 Nick Craig – – 6 pts
7th DEN 3 Jørgen Svendsen – – 7 pts
8th NZL 592 Rod Davis – – 8 pts
9th SWE 100 Thomas Hansson-Mild – – 9 pts
10th NZL 584 Rohan Lord – – 10 pts
11th NZL 575 Mike Wilde – – 11 pts
12th NZL 497 Harry Milne – – 12 pts
13th NZL 500 Jonathon Barnett – – 13 pts
14th NZL 582 Greg Wilcox – – 14 pts
15th NZL 583 Eric Rone – – 15 pts
16th NZL 509 Josh Newman – – 16 pts
17th NZL 580 Ben Morrison – – 17 pts
18th NZL 546 Thomas Olds – – 18 pts
19th NZL 485 Josh Armit – – 19 pts
20th DEN 20 Jesper Hoejer – – 20 pts
21st AUS 725 David Ketteridge – – 21 pts
22nd DEN 22 Ask Askholm – – 22 pts
23rd NZL 567 Chris Fenwick – – 23 pts
24th NZL 577 Paul Rhodes – – 24 pts
25th AUS 779 Tim Davies – – 25 pts
26th AUS 753 Mark Skelton – – 26 pts
27th GBR 44 Chris Turner – – 27 pts
28th DEN 1407 Malte Pedersen – – 28 pts
29th NZL 474 Dean Salthouse – – 29 pts
30th NZL 470 Greg Salthouse – – 30 pts