Well, another year down and Ericsson 4th season comes to an end with a great Nationals in Christchurch.

The 2000 (Dec) Tangaroa competition was cancelled due to Wellingtons appalling weather. So no medal from that event this time around.

Masterton didn't go to plan with a good first race and going down hill

A new event for this year was the Porirua Watersports Festival. This was a mix of events over a weekend and a public holiday (Waitangi day ) the following Tuesday

Wellington for once had fantastic weather. Light southerlies, sunshine the whole thing. This made for close racing that wasnt dependent on how well the crews could manage the chop/swell/wind/etc. Our own results started well. On the Sat we won the corporate challenge and the heat. On the Sunday we won the first race which has us on track for the Corporate Championship. Unfortunately, the semifinal race had us pipped (by 4/100 of second) for second place with the result we went to the runners up final. In this race we were hammered by Wellington City council who beat us by an almost full 2 seconds. This came a shock as we'd beaten them in the heats on the previous day. No prises for runners up, even those that came second, so that had us feeling pretty flat.

The interesting thing was some of the times posted by the secondary schools. They were doing better times than many of the corporate teams (us included).

The following weekend was the Nationals at ChCh. time trial over 5 race. Quite different racing against open and corporate teams etc. Two on Sat. Won inter company challenge. First heat did a better time by about a second. Never did worse than a 3rd place , but doesn't count in time trial. Very cold weekend with us Wellingtonians suffering under a light wind that cut through like a knife.

In the end we made the runners up final again! Gutted. so I don't think we were to upset that we had to leave the party early.