Next big thing sails from North

Michael Cate is the next big thing to roll off the Northland sailing production line and big things are expected from him after he was awarded this year's Yachting New Zealand (YNZ) ISAF Laser Cup.
With names like Russell Coutts, Craig Monk, Dean Barker and fellow Northlander Andrew Murdoch inscribed on it, receiving the cup as the winner of the ISAF Youth selection regattas was a big deal for the proud Northlander.
"It's good for Northland sailing, I mean there's always someone coming through up here it seems, but it's pleasing for me to be following in the footsteps of someone like Andrew Murdoch," he said.
Indeed, Cate is one of a legion of young, talented Kiwi sailors looking to take over from Murdoch if, as expected, he moves on from the Laser class after competing in the London Olympics. The Whangarei Boys High School Year13 prefect won the cup with consistently good results all the way through this summer's selection regattas, earning the cup and a four-regatta European tour starting next month.
At 190cm Cate is big for a sailor and at 75kg he's at the top end of the weight range for the Radial class but it hasn't done him any harm. He was top youth at New Zealand Laser Nationals by an astonishing 26 points, but even more notably he was second overall in the open Radial competition behind Olympian Jo Aleh. Cate then followed that up with another first youth at Sail Auckland, again taking second overall in the Radials.
After some varied wind conditions at nationals, the Sail Auckland results were a confirmation of Cate's ability to excel in light winds, with all four days of competition held in two to 10 knot breezes.
"That was the key for me, keeping relaxed and cool in the light stuff and not getting hot-headed and making mistakes instead being patient and waiting for the breeze to come up," he said.
Cate has learned well under the tuition of his father, Graham, and others at the Onerahi Yacht Club and worked hard to prepare for the season last year so when the big races came around, he found it easy to focus on the sailing ahead.
"I didn't sail excessively over summer and when I did sail it was just for an hour or so just to keep my feel for the boat, so all the training beforehand didn't go out the window."
The sailor now has it all ahead of him in Europe. But since his selection, he's getting the full treatment from YNZ, with their high-performance coach Ian Neely putting him through his paces, particularly on starts and tactics of big fleet sailing, at every available moment.
"Europe's going to be a big learning curve for me but this will help get me some first up experience at international level and see what some of the other young guys are doing over there," he said.
Cate, in his final year of youth sailing, has chosen to compete in the under-21 World and European championships in the full-rig Laser class, before switching back for what he hopes will be his grand finale to youth sailing at La Rochelle, France; success in the Laser Radial World Youth Championships.
"It'll bridge the gap between the two classes for me and it will get me into the full-rig circles easier. If I can show Yachting New Zealand I can perform reasonably at that level then it should help rather than returning to New Zealand and then trying to perform well against all the Olympic contenders," he said.
The 17-year-old knows how tough the competition is in the Lasers and reckons it could quite some time to assert himself. The Laser class is undoubtedly the best contested Olympic class in New Zealand with several pretenders to Murdoch's throne pushing him hard.
The fields in all classes are bound to change after the Olympics and Cate will be aiming at the following Olympics in 2016.
Cate's first event will be a return to the competitive UK Volvo Youth National Championships on the English south coast starting on April 11.