A trio of coaches has encouraged sailing numbers at Tauranga Yacht and Power Boat Club – Jean Montigny (France), Greg Dawson (England) and Maria Ferrario (Argentina) spent the summer days dealing with the next generation of sailors to follow the likes of Molly Meech, Peter Burling, Thomas Saunders, Cole Rippey, Trent Rippey and Jason Saunders.

They organized the centerboard sailing division at club with an telling roll-call of stars. Twenty four year old Dawson from Southend-on-Sea in Essex, came from Australia, the place where he got his sailing qualifications.

He has not heard of any well known alumni of the club before coming here. This was all new to him. He had no idea of the monster that he was walking into in terms of the yacht club. He found out about the job from two people he worked with in Spain who ran the centre here last year.

Well, Dawson really relished working with passionate sailors throughout a great age range. He told that they start them off in the learn to sail level-one course at 7, but before Christmas they had a kid as young as five who learned to sail and is now hooning around the bay, and quite brilliantly. They have college groups who they do teams racing coaching with. The kids’ attitude as well as parents is quite different there. They appear a lot more laidback compared to England.