This year the 104th Lipton Cup, held in March, was won with a woman at the helm for the very first time.
Kelsey Muir and Taka Hewett have sailed and raced Rangi Manu for 10 years or so after Hewett and Rob Warring rebuilt her. Their hard work and experience finally paid off when the six crew – Kelsey Muir, Taka Hewett, Tim Merkens, Matt Sugden, Matt Collins, and Mike Parker – were able to make their mark on this magnificent trophy for the first time. It is also the first time the race has been won by a husband-and-wife team – Kelsey’s husband Tim was also crewing.
Kelsey descends from a long line of sailors. Her grandfather was the legendary boatbuilder, designer and sailor Jim Young, and her grandmother, Margaret Patterson, was ahead of her time, racing as a teenager against the boys and winning. She was also involved in the first women’s racing in Auckland.
Kelsey’s mum, Wendy, has been racing with the same crew in the Ponsonby Cruising Club’s (PCC) women’s racing for over 20 years, and she and Kelsey now race against each other, including in the women’s Nationals pre-Covid.
Women’s racing at the club is dynamic. PCC welcomes anyone interested in sailing and teams work to pass on knowledge and skills. They are all passionate about what they do.
The Lipton Cup was once one of New Zealand’s biggest yacht races and is still highly-regarded. It is also the oldest consecutively raced-for cup by a single class of yacht in New Zealand, possibly the world. Kelsey’s historic cup-winning drive is a huge achievement and should not go unrecognised.
These shallow draft boats, originally built from kauri, with large, often cumbersome sails, were produced between the 1860s and 1970s.
Intentionally over-canvassed to get their catches back to the wharves quickly to fetch the best prices, Mullet boats were and remain notoriously challenging to sail. The benefits of a lifting centreboard meant they could navigate muddy estuaries at low tide, although their timing had to be right, and in high winds they were prone to capsize.
Mullet boats were described at the time thus: “A 22-foot shoal draft centre-boarder with a daring bowsprit, an impossibly long main boom, a cloud-scraping spread of sails and class stalwarts who thrive on equal injections of history, spread, spills and thrills.”
On weekends, they often raced for fun, with wagers placed with bookies. By 1915, these L-class mullet boats had developed into one of the strongest racing fleets on the harbour.
Mullet boats, some more than 100 years old, assemble in Auckland every year to race for the Lipton Cup. It’s New Zealand’s oldest trophy, donated to the Ponsonby Cruising Club by Sir Thomas Lipton, who commissioned it from the Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Co. of Regent Street, London, the same silversmiths who made the America’s Cup. Sir Thomas Lipton raced the America’s Cup five times but never won.
