COLIN PALMER AT THE 7TH WORLDS IN TERSCHELLING

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Colin Palmer - The Man

New Zealand's own world landyachting champion Colin Palmer of Silverdale, Auckland, will be trying to make his mark in another landyacht class at the Red Bull World Championships in The Netherlands starting this weekend.

Colin will forgo his preferred Class 3 landyacht to sail a Standart at the event but it isn't the first time he has sailed one of the sleek French-designed and built Standarts. He sailed on at Lytham St Annes in England a number of years ago but dismissed the craft as being sluggish and difficult to manage.

Since then the Standart has been "refined" and become a popular one-design monocoque landyacht that has taken the European landsailing community by storm. If the international landyachting federation, FISLY, achieves its aims, the Standart will become its entry craft for inclusion at Olympic level.

Standarts have recently become available in New Zealand through Palmerston North-based landyacht manufacturing company, imacnewzealand, which is owned and operated by Ian McLachlan. imacnewzealand secured the licence to to make Standarts in New Zealand from French designer Jean-Philippe Krischer who owns the world-renown French landyacht company "Seagull".

And, while Colin Palmer may not be overly familiar with the Standart under European race conditions, he has a race pedigree that few in the landsailing world can attest to.

Colin got into land yachting 22 years ago, literally by accident. He had injured himself while participating in his favourite pastime of the moment - motocross - when he had a mishap which left him with bad brusing and a broken leg.

While on the mend, he went along with a flatmate to Kariotahi Beach, 40 minutes drive south of Auckland's central business district. His friend, who hailed from the US, had indulged in ice yachting, land yachting's sister sport, and had built a landsailing version of his ice boat to play around with on New Zealand's beaches.

Colin was unable to help himself. He had a go and, in his own words: "I was hooked!" Although work and his other recreational pursuits ensured he only dabbled now and then over the following years, land yachting was never far from his mind.

Nine years after his "first taste" Colin fronted up at the first international land yachting regatta to be staged in New Zealand. The event was held at landsailing's mecca, Ninety Mile Beach. Colin entered "two boats" and came up trumps in both classes.

Those victories well and truly set the scene for Colin over the next few years. Being involved in the boating industry - he's a director of Adhesive Technologies in West Auckland - Colin was able to capitalise on his expertise in resins and epoxy, designing and building craft which were ahead of their time.

His next international outing was on a drylake bed near Ivanpah, 35 miles south-west of Las Vegas, in Nevada, in 1990. The event, held annually now, was the first of land yachting's version of the America's Cup.

Colin, aware the best in the world at the time were attending, ensured he had a craft built for the dry desert conditions and knew it would come down to boat speed and sailing ability.

He needn't have worried. He outclassed and outsailed them all, losing only one race and that was the last of the regatta and it was down to gear failure.

As Colin relates, he wasn't concentrating and failed to check things over properly, failing to see things weren't as secure as they should and he ended up losing his rig.

It was his outstanding performance at Ivanpah that saw him invited to compete in England in a sail-off of the best in the world.

The Smirnoff Challenge was staged at Lytham St Annes, a few miles south of Blackpool on England's north-west coast.

The hosts, the Fylde International Land Yacht Club, had invited two of top land sailors from each country to compete in an event to finally settle who was "the best". In light and tricky sailing airs, on a beach renown for making things difficult for land sailors, Colin proved he was the ultimate champion, winning all his races in one class and finishing a close second to Nord Embroden of the USA in the other.

In October 1997, New Zealand held the Open World Championships which attracted a huge fleet of land sailors from the USA and Europe including Sweden and Germany. Colin fronted up in NZ301 and the rest is history. Still putting finishing touches to the yacht on the start line of the first race, Colin flummoxed the Class 3 sailing fleet when he put such a winning margin on his opposition. Again he lost just one race but was so far ahead on points he needn¼t have sailed the last day.

He attended the 6th World Championships at De Panne in Belgium in 1998, taking with him a new class 3 yacht with innovative design and components including carbon fibre wheel rims. However, it wasn't Colin's event. He had misfortune on the rough Belgian beach and could manage, at week's end, only 13th.

Colin didn't go with the New Zealand team to Ivanpah Drylake earlier this year. Work commitments precluded his attendance. The event, the World Cup 2000 hosted by the North American Land Sailing Association, was a very successful foray by the 16-person Kiwi team who returned home with four World Cup titles and 10 of the 16 having top five finishes.

Colin is the sole New Zealander competing at the Red Bull 7th World Championships being held on the Dutch North Sea island of Terschelling from Saturday, October 7th to Friday, October 13th. The island of Terschelling is one of the "Wadden" islands and can be reached only by ferry.

Racing will commence on Sunday, October 8 with the maximum of two races per class being held each day, the final raceday being Friday, October 13. Race duration will be 45 minutes. The race course will be set on a daily basis depending on wind direction and tide.

Terschelling is renown as a flat beach to sail unlike most European beaches. It has two large banks of sand broken by small streamlets which run back onto the lower part of the beach edge. Beach conditions can change dramatically in a very short period as with all the European beaches but overall Terschelling is one of the few North Hemisphere beaches which has any similarity to New Zealand beach conditions.

Weather throughout October is generally fine with excellent landsailing winds from the north-west.

There will be five race classes at the Red Bull-sponsored event - Class 2, Class 3, Class 5 Open, Class 5 Ladies and Standart. Each participating country can enter a team maximum of 10 pilots per class.

There are some 44 entries in the Standart fleet at Terschelling with 10 of them sponsored by local Terschelling companies to enable international pilots to compete at the event. Aside from the European teams, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and the USA will also contest the Standart section of the regatta.

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