1985 Cherub Worlds

Auckland New Zealand

The last time the Cherub class world champs was held in NZ was 1978 when it was won by Mark Patterson, and the time before that was 1972 when Steve Martin won with Rex Sellars second.
The fleet this year was smaller than in the past with only six Australian boats and none from Britain. The standard of boats and sailing at the top as however very high, Four boats dominating the contest by never finishing out of the four places.
Greg Hartnet and James Synge proved Outstanding- only once finishing out of first place. The top three Australians were all from the same club, George's River, and were race sharp from competition among themselves.
Quiet Riot, from Tauranga, lacked this and it showed in earlier races. Graeme Laurie and Lance Manson had, however, managed to tune their boat well in spite of lack of close competition here, and had good boat speed. They also had an interesting hull shape with very straight vee - sections forward were most favored, very U - shaped bows. Foreign Affair and New Testament are both former New Zealand boats, Foreign affair having won the last contest inQueensland for New Zealand.
There were some interesting developments in construction but not much evidence of the move toward foam and glass or exotics, which I had expected to see. Skateaway was, I thought, the best looking boat in the contest and she was basically a plywood boat with a foam and glass bottom. Quiet Riot is strip planked from Balsa and glassed inside and out, decks and buoyancy being from plywood.
Nearly all had their masts stepped below deck, but the notable exception; still deck stepped was Foreign Affair. Center mainsheets have gone and the top Australians used rope travelers (adjustable) Aft while the top New Zealand boats merely had non-adjustable bridles, relying on vanging to hold their booms down when not sheeted hard in center.
Foils, particularly centerboards have gone back to, indeed beyond the elliptical ones of the 1960s and are almost triangular in shape.
Sails seemed to me to have undergone a great deal of development and the Australian ones had noticeably more area, particularly in their jibs. Radial heads enabled a very large roach area to be carried, and in both Foreign Affair and Skateaway the top batten appeared to be completely outside of the line between head and clew. Sheeting would appear critical, and oversheeting probably fatal. Fullness, especially higher up, seemed to be the order of the day in mainsails. Sailmakers varied considerably and no certain single sailmaker appeared to have a wide following. Neither did exotic sailcloth although the Australians were using dynec spinnakers and Foreign Affair used a Mylar jib. Brian NZ had a kevlar-reinforced mainsail, but only used this in one race.
This boat was interesting in that the whole of her hull, decks and buoyancy compartments are carved (perhaps sculptured is the best word) from polystyrene and glassed over. She is beautifully finished but her performance suffered from lack of time for tuning and possibly an overweight hull. Despite the smallest fleet to date the contest was a good one as well as being very friendly and there seems no doubt that it will continue. With the high cost involved in travelling to England, it is possible that it will revert to an inter-dominion contest, as in earlier years and be held every year, which should encourage growth.

John Spencer (yes, the John Spencer)
This report first appeared in Nautical News Magazine, N.Z.

Results

Place	Number	Country	Name	Crew	Designer	Points
1	2712	Aus	Foreign Affair	Greg Hartnett and James Synge	P Mcneil	0
2	2720	NZ	Quiet Riot	Graeme Laurie and Lance Manson	P Mcneil/Laurie	23.1
3	2877	Aus	Skateaway	Bryan Smith and Julian O Mahoney	B Bollard	28.4
4	2709	Aus	New Testament	Andrew and Stephen Hay	D Owst	38.4
5	2604	Aus	Nutcracker	Stephen Freirs and Jamie Robinson	?	60
6	2570	NZ	Fast Forward		Clinton	69.8
7	2881	AUS	The Edge		?	75.4
8	2717	NZ	Brian N.Z		Trotter	79.7
9	2711	NZ	Rural ark		Trotter	79.7