Young New Zealand sailors have had a busy few weeks on the water, with high-performance coaching clinics in three classes giving girls and up-and-coming talent the chance to train alongside some of the sport's most experienced figures.
At Torbay Sailing Club last weekend, 12 girls turned up for a 49erFX try-out day. The high-performance women's skiff is not an easy boat to get to grips with, and the session introduced the group to its demands under the eye of sailors who know it better than most.
New Zealand's leading 49erFX crew, Nicola and Rebecca Hume, were on hand, alongside Olympic silver medallist Molly Meech. Yachting New Zealand Athlete Development Manager Geoff Woolley, 2004 Olympian Andrew Brown and former 49er sailor Sam Bacon rounded out a line-up with serious depth.
For a group of girls new to the class, that's a lot of combined experience to draw on in a single day.
Across town at Murrays Bay Sailing Club, the 14 sailors in Yachting New Zealand's Starling Girls Accelerator programme had a packed weekend of their own. It began on dry land with a Friday presentation from High Performance Sport New Zealand's Vicki Hudson, before the group moved to the water for a full coaching clinic.
The timing wasn't random. Murrays Bay will host the Starling National Championships in April 2027, so this was effectively a long-range rehearsal on home water.
Coaches Naiomi Ferrissey, Matthew Rist and Caleb Armit worked with the sailors throughout the clinic, building skills with that 2027 target still some way off but clearly on the radar already.
The weekend before, attention turned south. More than a dozen regional ILCA 6 sailors gathered in Picton for a three-day clinic running from Friday to Sunday.
Sailors travelled from Christchurch, Picton, Nelson and Wellington to take part, bringing a wide spread of experience. Some were new to the ILCA 6, while others had around two years in the boat already.
Rist, fresh off coaching duties at Murrays Bay, worked the Picton clinic alongside George Pilkington. Starting technique and positioning, boat speed and boat handling all featured, along with strategy sessions and some club racing to test it under pressure.
A barbecue capped things off. Not every lesson from a weekend like that happens on the water, and for sailors who had travelled from four different regions, the chance to connect off it mattered just as much.
